As time goes on, more light is being shed on the dark realities of the October 7th massacre. In a recent article from Haaretz it talks about the strangely slow response time from the IDF to the massacre, and the fact that dozens of soldiers stood outside a kibbutz while fighting and carnage went on. As we read in one excerpt:

The results of the investigation, which was presented by Maj. Gen. (res.) Mickey Edelstein, reveals the unbelievable chaos that reigned in the kibbutz from the morning hours of that Saturday until the evening of the following day. Some 340 armed terrorists assaulted the kibbutz in the first hours. The adjacent military outpost, Magen Be’eri (Paga), was attacked at the same time by a large Hamas force. The soldiers of the Golani infantry brigade inside were pinned down, unable to assist the kibbutz. The headquarters of the Gaza Division and its northern brigade also did not function and did not provide any aid.

Be’eri was defended initially by 13 members of its own security squad, and with them Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Bachar, a kibbutz member. They had at their disposal six M-16 rifles and a few pistols. The rest of the rifles were locked in the armory, as instructed by the Home Front Command, out of fear of theft. But the security coordinator of the kibbutz and his deputy were killed in the first minutes, and no one else had the keys to the armory.

Hamas launched their attack early in the morning, breaking into Israel at around 7:40 AM, and yet it wasn’t until 2:PM that the IDF began to gather more troops:

It wasn’t until around 2 P.M. that the balance of forces began to shift, when the IDF started to gather additional troops and some of the terrorists headed back to the Gaza Strip with their booty – hostages and bodies. Even then, the first troops that arrived in the kibbutz were General Staff back-up forces, some of which landed nearby in helicopters. No reinforcements at all arrived from the Gaza Division, which was under attack. Many more hours were needed to rid the kibbutz of terrorists and to free the besieged families. It’s estimated that about 100 terrorists were killed in the battle of Kibbutz Be’eri.

In Kibbutz Be’eri, dozens of soldiers waited outside as fighting went inside:

Outside, in the parking lot, at times dozens more soldiers and police officers waited for instructions and in the meantime did not enter the kibbutz in order to engage the enemy and rescue civilians. Yet inside, the security squad was fighting for its life and saving lives.

The investigation found serious errors by commanders in two elite commando units, Sayeret Matkal and Shaldag. A small force of Shaldag, which reached the kibbutz in the morning, backed away from the first line of contact with the terrorists after one of its men was killed and another wounded.

The IDF hopes that the transparency and openness with which it is making the results of the investigations available to the public, and especially to the inhabitants of the communities that were attacked, will help rebuild some of the trust that was lost in the shadow of the massacre. That will be difficult and it will take time. Diagnosing and admitting the flaws will also not fully dissipate the anger and the grief over what happened in Be’eri and in many other communities in the area. Families bled or burned to death in their safe rooms – and the IDF wasn’t there.
For the investigation, the kibbutz members gave Edelstein’s team all that day’s WhatsApp exchanges. Many of the people who wrote those messages are no longer among the living. The last message they sent their friends was: Where the hell is the IDF?

As time goes on, and more facts are shown or leaked out, the realities of October 7th will appear even more grim.