A short time after the October 7 massacre, I traveled south to the IDF's Kissufim base, which had been attacked by Hamas's Nukhba force. At the entrance were burned motorbikes used by the terrorists, and the officers' vehicles, also destroyed when the terrorists fired anti-tank rockets or by the Israeli tanks.
A mount nearby was where the terrorists who were killed were temporarily buried, "because they began to smell," one of the Golani Brigade soldiers told me. "There were about 100 bodies spread across the area."
The equipment the terrorists carried with them in the attack was kept in a dedicated shed, The amount was staggering. There were Russian or Chinese-made weapons, explosives and guns, of course, rockets, missiles, bullets and more, including first aid kits.
Along the fence, where the terrorists entered, we saw test tubes that we were told were used as detonators for explosives. The base was destroyed. The soldiers walked around slowly, their eyes bloodshot, their movements hesitant.
I want to be clear and write in no uncertain terms that what I did not see at Kissufim, were flipflops belonging to the terrorists. What I saw with my own eyes, in the base, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not visited after the massacre and in other areas where he has not been at all, since then, were the remnants of an organized military assault on the state of Israel.
In his press conference on Wednesday, Netanyahu tried to portray the Hamas terrorists as an unruly mob who overpowered the IDF. But this was a skilled, prepared and well-trained army. The Nukhba terrorists were not a flip-flop-wearing mob, but a well-trained commando force.
After they overran the military forces and the defense teams in the border area communities, a second wave of armed Hamas forces arrived, and then in the third wave, the looters came. I don't think, after all of that, there is any importance in discussing the terrorists' choice of shoes or if they were the flip-flops that the prime minister described.
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It seems that Netanyahu still has not comprehended the severity of the events during the October 7 massacre. There was a colossal failure on the part of the military, but the failure of the Israeli government to recognize that Hamas was building a terror force under its nose was no less colossal.
Whether or not the prime minister understood what had happened is irrelevant. He does not care. In his press conference, Netanyahu laid the blame on the military for not having troops to protect the border in all but one community, where he said nothing had happened. But something did happen there, at Ein Hashlosha. Four people were murdered, unbeknownst to the prime minister.
Hamas would not have been able to build such a force without massive resources and funding. Was the money provided to the terror group from Qatar, clearly marked to be used for tunnel building and attacks? No. Did Qatar intend for Hamas to use its funding for those purposes? We cannot say.
Nadav EyalPhoto: Avigail UziBut what is important to know is that Hamas sought to destroy Israel. The UN paid for Gaza's school, the international community paid for the hospitals in the Strip and Qatar, which was urged to provide cash without any restrictions by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, provided the cash, funded the rest. And that is how Hams was able to develop its lethal military wing.
Of all those responsible for the failings leading up to and on October 7, only Netanyahu was in power nearly all the time, since 2009.