When Hamas attacked Israeli bases along the Gaza border on October 7, soldier Roni Lifshitz was off his shift.
She and about 20 other female military personnel have for almost two years monitored Gaza with cameras just a few hundred meters from the border. And several times months before the attack, superiors alerted that something seemed to be afoot.
– Suddenly we saw Jeeps with Hamas soldiers along the fence. They were only 300 meters from us. And they stayed in every posting. They looked, took pictures and pointed at our cameras. It was strange and unusual. We certainly warned.
Then came the attack they had warned about. She first heard it from her colleague and friend.
– I opened my phone and saw a message from my best friend at the base that there is a raid. I thought: no no, that can’t have happened. Then she wrote in a Whatsapp chat: “I love you all dear friends”. Then our communication was broken, says Roni Lifshitz.
Civilian Yahir Cohen also warned
Yahir Cohen, who does not work for the military, had before the attack as a leisure activity scouting with binoculars and a camera towards Gaza. Two months before the bloody attack by Hamas, he caught something he had never seen before along the fence around Gaza. Something that was completely ignored by the military.
– I saw a lot of Jeeps near the front, a lot of soldiers, they got in and out of the cars and stood at Hamas posts. We saw everything and it was really strange. I talked to the soldiers but they just said “you don’t know anything that the intelligence doesn’t already know”.
Feeling great frustration
Since the attack, Roni Lifshitz has attended about fifteen funerals of her colleagues.
Although during the summer they did not understand the extent of what they saw in Gaza, today she feels great sadness and frustration that their warnings were not taken seriously. Around 15 female camera monitors she spent around the clock with at the base are now dead and around five are captured by Hamas.
– We are just a cog in the machinery. Ordinary soldiers whose opinion they don’t care about. Military personnel at all levels must be replaced, from the highest commander to the lowest sergeant, says Roni Lifshitz.
To the criticism, the Israeli military responds via Whatsapp that they are now focused on wiping out the threat from the terrorist movement Hamas. Such questions will be addressed later.