Former Israeli General Yossi Sariel admitted that Israeli forces were paralyzed on October 7, 2023, failing to prevent the Al-Aqsa Flood attack and highlighting deeper issues within the military.
Brigadier General Yossi Sariel, the former commander of the Israeli military’s 8200 Intelligence Unit, admitted that the Israeli forces were ‘paralyzed’ for several hours on October 7, 2023, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
During a session on Tuesday at the Palmachim base, where the results of an internal investigation were presented to senior Israeli army officials, Sariel took responsibility for the events, admitting that what transpired could not be undone and requesting forgiveness for the failure.
“On October 7 at 6:29 AM, I did not perform the task as my subordinates and commanders expected of me, as I demanded of myself,” he was quoted as saying by Yedioth Ahronoth.
“October 7th is not an accident. It’s a serious illness that spread in the army. We didn’t do the most important thing, to ask and investigate so that we can deal with the illness that spread,” Sariel reportedly added.
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Sariel also made strong criticisms of former Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, stating that while many civilians and security personnel moved in response to the attack, the military remained immobile.
“There were many activities, both in the field and in the General Staff, mainly a lot of civilians and forces who jumped in and came, but the entire IDF did not function for long hours,” Sariel was quoted as saying.
He pointed out that since the start of the war, Israel’s top leaders had failed to meet and ask the crucial question.
“The most complex and difficult thing is that this group did not stop for 507 days, not even for 10 minutes, to ask how we failed as a group,” Sariel reportedly said.
The former commander also claimed that Hamas leadership had given orders to cancel the operation if certain conditions, such as the presence of tanks or drones in the targeted sites, were met. However, these factors were absent, which, in his view, led to the successful execution of the attack.
Sariel concluded that the events of October 7 were not an isolated incident but a sign of deep structural failure within the Israeli military, which had not prepared for the possibility of a surprise war and failed to treat the Qassam Brigades as a legitimate army.
On the morning of October 7, 2023, Palestinian resistance forces, led by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, launched a comprehensive operation dubbed Al-Aqsa Flood.
This multi-pronged attack, which involved land, sea, and air assaults, saw resistance fighters infiltrating several settlements in the Gaza envelope, marking the largest attack on Israel in decades.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
