Commanders ignored warning signs from female soldiers tasked with monitoring the Gaza border in the weeks before the brutal terrorist attack on October 7.
The entire world was shocked by Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on October 7. Such an action is impossible without proper preparation. And Hamas prepared for the raid without camouflage. The female soldiers of the Israeli Border Defense Corps claim in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz: they noticed signs of preparations for the attack, but their superiors did not pay attention to them - because they were women.
"This is a unit made up exclusively of young girls and young female commanders," said one member of the detachment, who asked not to be named. He believes that if men had sat in front of the monitors, "things would have been completely different".
Tácpitánjots, the female observers of the Israel Defense Forces, belong to the Border Guard Corps and vigilantly control Israel's borders and the territory of the West Bank.
Many consider them the "eyes of the Army" because they provide soldiers in the field with real-time intelligence - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With the help of cameras, sensors and maps, the observers gather information about the 15-30 kilometer section for which they are individually responsible.
Weeks before the attack by Hamas on October 7, the Tác pitanijot stationed one kilometer from the Gaza border noticed ominous signs.
Members of Hamas practiced seizing an Israeli observation tower amid unusually increased drone activity, recalled one of the soldiers.
Drones were sent into the air every day for two months before the attack, sometimes several times a day. The drones flew close to the border, sometimes just 300 meters from the fence, sometimes even closer, said the woman, who identified herself as Ilana.
"A month and a half before the outbreak of the war, we saw that an exact scale replica of one of the Israeli observation towers was built in a Hamas training camp. They practiced how to take down the guard," said the tácpitánijot.
The observers immediately warned their superiors through the chain of command, but their signals were ignored by their superiors.
During the attack, the terrorists used the same methods they practiced during the preparations, using drones against the observation towers, Ilana said.
Another unnamed soldier saw the Gazans building an exact replica of a Merkava Mark 4 tank, which was also used in training, the Times of Israel reported. However, this report also slipped somewhere in the top management's accounts.
Moreover, no one warned the observers that the full-scale attack by Hamas had begun. Yet if they had known about it, some of them probably would have survived the carnage.
The IDF left them alone.
At least the soldiers had guns and died heroes. The female observers were simply slaughtered and had no chance to defend themselves, said one of the surviving tácpitánijot, who introduced herself as Jára.
One of the observing soldiers directly apologized to her superior, whom she woke up in the early hours of October 7, saying that she was experiencing "something unusual", noted the report on the work of the observers published the other day.
The document is not the first summary that the work of the observers stationed at the Nahal Oz kibbutz was not taken seriously.
In the past, public service media also interviewed soldiers who confirmed that their warnings turned out to be empty words.
On October 7, 15 female soldiers died at the Nahal Oz base, and another six were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists.
Cover image: The Israeli army
Source: Northfoto
