Lieutenant Colonel Haim Cohen, who commanded the northern brigade of the Gaza Division on October 7 and during the maneuvers in the Strip, revealed in his farewell speech an event that occurred, he said, about a month and a half before Hamas' surprise attack.
In his farewell speech, he accused the Chief of Staff of the General Staff of not having basic information. "I will forever ask where the Air Force was on October 7th. I will forever ask how the intelligence did not warn of the surprise war.".
Cohen claimed that he wanted to strike a surprise blow at the terrorist organization - and refused: "At that time, there was shooting, explosives and violent disturbances on the border fence, and the entire chain of command came to patrol the area, including the Minister of Defense. I recommended an opening strike to everyone, and the message I received from everyone was - Hamas is deterred.".
Cohen said that unknown elements in the army were briefing him in order to pin the blame for the October 7 massacre on him. He referred to the events of that day and made the accusation: "At 3:30 I left for the brigade, even though the intelligence was vague," he said. "Tom thought that at least part of the IDF chain of command was jumping. Unfortunately, I was wrong in the first hour of the battle. At 6:29 the gates of hell opened on the brigade. As I jumped to the battalion headquarters amid a heavy barrage of high-altitude fire, I recognized a wide valley with dozens of locations of hundreds of terrorists, paragliders and rubber boats, all at the same time. I declare that we are in a surprise war. I am amazed by the enemy's ability to bring out a terrorist army to attack without intelligence. I only learned about the Jericho Wall plan in retrospect in Ilana Dayan's investigation about a month later.".
He added, "I realized that I had to try to stop thousands of terrorists, and command dozens of events simultaneously. That day, no one from the General Staff's operations center bothered to open the communication networks. While the media reported a reliable situational picture from civilians, no one bothered to summarize it from the IDF's point of view in real time.".
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