Finally an account of what happened that makes sense. This is an excerpted Washington Post article.
"TEL AVIV — On the morning of Oct. 7, hundreds of Hamas militants switched on their GoPros and cellphones and began live-streaming the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, massacring at least 1,400 people and abducting nearly 200, according to Israeli authorities.TEL AVIV — On the morning of Oct. 7, hundreds of Hamas militants switched on their GoPros and cellphones and began live-streaming the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, massacring at least 1,400 people and abducting nearly 200, according to Israeli authorities.
What began as a highly organized stealth attack, using drone technology to overtake Israeli military observation points, soon devolved into a bloody and chaotic rampage. It underscored Hamas’s capacity for sophisticated planning and indiscriminate killing; the ability of the group to conceal details of a massive offensive operation and its struggle to manage fighters once they had bulldozed their way past Israel’s border fence.
It was, by both Palestinian and Israeli accounts, a staggering and unexpected Hamas victory and an indictment of Israel’s vaunted military and intelligence services.
Hamas’s political leadership in exile said they were shocked at the lack of resistance: “We were expecting to get a smaller number of hostages and return, but the army collapsed in front of us, what were we to do?” Ali Barakeh, a Beirut-based Hamas representative, said in an interview with The Washington Post on Monday.
“The Israeli army has become a paper tiger,” Barakeh continued, “and that’s why the number of hostages was so big, and the number of Israeli casualties was so big.”
Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, said the operation was the result of at least two years of planning, a period that included two conflicts between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist militant group in Gaza. At the time, Hamas was criticized for standing on the sidelines as PIJ leaders were eliminated by Israeli strikes.
It was part of a vast con, said Eisin, “to lull Israel into complacency,” while Hamas gathered intelligence and quietly built up its capabilities. The fighters’ apparent knowledge of Israeli border towns could have been gleaned in part from the thousands of Gazans who crossed the Israeli border on a daily basis, Eisin said, earning wages in the same communities that were overrun.
“The Israeli army has become a paper tiger,” Barakeh continued, “and that’s why the number of hostages was so big, and the number of Israeli casualties was so big.”
Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, said the operation was the result of at least two years of planning, a period that included two conflicts between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist militant group in Gaza. At the time, Hamas was criticized for standing on the sidelines as PIJ leaders were eliminated by Israeli strikes.
It was part of a vast con, said Eisin, “to lull Israel into complacency,” while Hamas gathered intelligence and quietly built up its capabilities. The fighters’ apparent knowledge of Israeli border towns could have been gleaned in part from the thousands of Gazans who crossed the Israeli border on a daily basis, Eisin said, earning wages in the same communities that were overrun...
The gunmen held hundreds of families hostage in their homes, forcing some to feed them, or to watch as they killed relatives, witnesses have said.
The militants burned corpses, beheaded a wounded man with a garden hoe and fatally shot drivers as they entered residential towns, according to hours of videos gathered by the Israeli military, some of which were shared with journalists on Monday. The images could not be independently verified by The Post.
The militants had equipped themselves for a prolonged incursion, the IDF said Monday.
“They came with a lot of food, ammunition, medical aid,” said IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari. “They were not just planning to be there for a couple of hours.”
But the footage that has flooded social media also shows Hamas struggling in real time to deal with its horrifying success.
As the killing expanded to more than 20 Israeli towns and kibbutzim, one video shows militants trying to cram a large group of wounded hostages, two bodies deep, into the back of pickup truck. Militants who streamed in on motorcycles scrambled to find vehicles to carry their hostages back to Gaza. In Kfar Aza, militants went down the lines of parked cars, breaking windows and looking for one to steal. Yaffa Adar, an 85-year-old grandmother from the community of Nir Oz, was ferried over the border on a golf cart.
“This was a unique mixture of state-of-the-art, disciplined planning, combined with … barbarism and brutality,” said Shimrit Meir, a former senior adviser in the previous Israeli government.
Barakeh, the Hamas representative, said the aim of attack was “to free Palestinian prisoners, stop Israeli aggression on al-Aqsa Mosque, and to break the siege on Gaza,” Instead, the assault has led to unprecedented Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, killing more than 2,700 people, and has rallied the world behind Israel as it prepares for a large-scale land invasion.
“We have prepared ourselves for the ground assault, we’re not afraid of it,” Barakeh said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/16/hamas-attack-israel/
"TEL AVIV — On the morning of Oct. 7, hundreds of Hamas militants switched on their GoPros and cellphones and began live-streaming the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, massacring at least 1,400 people and abducting nearly 200, according to Israeli authorities.TEL AVIV — On the morning of Oct. 7, hundreds of Hamas militants switched on their GoPros and cellphones and began live-streaming the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, massacring at least 1,400 people and abducting nearly 200, according to Israeli authorities.
What began as a highly organized stealth attack, using drone technology to overtake Israeli military observation points, soon devolved into a bloody and chaotic rampage. It underscored Hamas’s capacity for sophisticated planning and indiscriminate killing; the ability of the group to conceal details of a massive offensive operation and its struggle to manage fighters once they had bulldozed their way past Israel’s border fence.
It was, by both Palestinian and Israeli accounts, a staggering and unexpected Hamas victory and an indictment of Israel’s vaunted military and intelligence services.
Hamas’s political leadership in exile said they were shocked at the lack of resistance: “We were expecting to get a smaller number of hostages and return, but the army collapsed in front of us, what were we to do?” Ali Barakeh, a Beirut-based Hamas representative, said in an interview with The Washington Post on Monday.
“The Israeli army has become a paper tiger,” Barakeh continued, “and that’s why the number of hostages was so big, and the number of Israeli casualties was so big.”
Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, said the operation was the result of at least two years of planning, a period that included two conflicts between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist militant group in Gaza. At the time, Hamas was criticized for standing on the sidelines as PIJ leaders were eliminated by Israeli strikes.
It was part of a vast con, said Eisin, “to lull Israel into complacency,” while Hamas gathered intelligence and quietly built up its capabilities. The fighters’ apparent knowledge of Israeli border towns could have been gleaned in part from the thousands of Gazans who crossed the Israeli border on a daily basis, Eisin said, earning wages in the same communities that were overrun.
“The Israeli army has become a paper tiger,” Barakeh continued, “and that’s why the number of hostages was so big, and the number of Israeli casualties was so big.”
Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, said the operation was the result of at least two years of planning, a period that included two conflicts between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist militant group in Gaza. At the time, Hamas was criticized for standing on the sidelines as PIJ leaders were eliminated by Israeli strikes.
It was part of a vast con, said Eisin, “to lull Israel into complacency,” while Hamas gathered intelligence and quietly built up its capabilities. The fighters’ apparent knowledge of Israeli border towns could have been gleaned in part from the thousands of Gazans who crossed the Israeli border on a daily basis, Eisin said, earning wages in the same communities that were overrun...
The gunmen held hundreds of families hostage in their homes, forcing some to feed them, or to watch as they killed relatives, witnesses have said.
The militants burned corpses, beheaded a wounded man with a garden hoe and fatally shot drivers as they entered residential towns, according to hours of videos gathered by the Israeli military, some of which were shared with journalists on Monday. The images could not be independently verified by The Post.
The militants had equipped themselves for a prolonged incursion, the IDF said Monday.
“They came with a lot of food, ammunition, medical aid,” said IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari. “They were not just planning to be there for a couple of hours.”
But the footage that has flooded social media also shows Hamas struggling in real time to deal with its horrifying success.
As the killing expanded to more than 20 Israeli towns and kibbutzim, one video shows militants trying to cram a large group of wounded hostages, two bodies deep, into the back of pickup truck. Militants who streamed in on motorcycles scrambled to find vehicles to carry their hostages back to Gaza. In Kfar Aza, militants went down the lines of parked cars, breaking windows and looking for one to steal. Yaffa Adar, an 85-year-old grandmother from the community of Nir Oz, was ferried over the border on a golf cart.
“This was a unique mixture of state-of-the-art, disciplined planning, combined with … barbarism and brutality,” said Shimrit Meir, a former senior adviser in the previous Israeli government.
Barakeh, the Hamas representative, said the aim of attack was “to free Palestinian prisoners, stop Israeli aggression on al-Aqsa Mosque, and to break the siege on Gaza,” Instead, the assault has led to unprecedented Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, killing more than 2,700 people, and has rallied the world behind Israel as it prepares for a large-scale land invasion.
“We have prepared ourselves for the ground assault, we’re not afraid of it,” Barakeh said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/16/hamas-attack-israel/
