October 7 attacks

• 1. Introduction

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  At around 6:30 on the morning of Saturday the 7th of October 2023, Hamas announced the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Mohammed Deif, commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, gave the speech. He said the operation would end "the last occupation on Earth."

  The October 7 attacks that followed were the first large-scale invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. They began the ongoing Gaza war, and Israel answered with a large-scale military operation in Gaza. The day fell on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. In Israel it is also called Black Saturday or the Simchat Torah Massacre.

  Three questions run through this documentary. How did armed groups from a blockaded strip break through a heavily monitored border? Who saw it coming, and why did the warnings fail? And why are some of the most widely repeated accounts of that day still disputed?

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• 2. Roots of the Conflict

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  Israel has held the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip, since the Six-Day War in 1967. In 2005 it dismantled all 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza. Even so, the United Nations, many legal and humanitarian organizations and most academic commentators still describe Gaza as occupied, because Israel controls its external affairs. A 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice affirmed that view.

  Hamas, formally the Islamic Resistance Movement, formed in 1987. It is the largest Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories. It has long called for the "complete liberation of Palestine" and has often used political violence, including suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, New Zealand and the UK designate it a terrorist organisation. In 2010 it tried to derail peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In 2017 it adopted a new charter that dropped antisemitic language and shifted its focus from Jews to Zionists. Scholars disagree on whether it seeks a state within the 1967 borders or still seeks the destruction of Israel.

  Throughout 2023, settler attacks displaced hundreds of Palestinians. In April, clashes broke out around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a contested holy site in Jerusalem. In May, Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group exchanged fire. By September, The Washington Post wrote that Israel and Hamas were "on the brink of war."

  On the 13th of September, five Palestinians were killed at the border. Israel said it found explosives hidden in a shipment and halted all exports from Gaza. Hamas denied the claim. Reuters quoted Palestinians who said the several-day ban affected thousands of families. Hamas put its forces on high alert, held exercises with other groups that included openly rehearsing the storming of Israeli settlements, and let protests at the barrier resume.

  On the 29th of September, Qatar, the UN and Egypt mediated an agreement to reopen crossing points and calm tensions. At that point, 17,000 Gazans held work permits in Israel. Little more than a week later, the border was breached.

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• 3. Plans and Warnings

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  For two years, Hamas ran hardwired phone lines through its tunnel network, nicknamed the "Gaza metro." The lines let it communicate covertly and evade Israeli intelligence while planning Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

  A video released in December 2022 showed Hamas training to take hostages, and another showed fighters practicing paragliding. On the 12th of September 2023, Hamas posted footage of its fighters training to blast through the border. After the attack, the Israel Defense Forces said Hamas had studied the nearby military bases and communities in detail.

  According to a New York Times investigation, a memo dated the 24th of August 2022 described an attack much like October 7. The memo was apparently written by Yahya Sinwar. It called for bulldozers to breach the fence and for multiple assault waves. It ordered fighters into residential areas to set them on fire. Unit commanders were told to film and broadcast the acts to mobilize Palestinians in the West Bank, Arabs in Israel and "our nation."

  The IDF reportedly seized more than 10,000 weapons after the attack, including RPGs, mines, sniper rifles, drones and thermobaric rockets. According to Israeli sources, seized maps and documents pointed to a coordinated, month-long operation to invade and occupy towns, cities and kibbutzim. The plans reached Kiryat Gat, 20 miles (32 km) into Israel, and included an attack on Ashkelon by sea. Western and Middle Eastern security officials gathered evidence that Hamas might have pushed on to the West Bank had the first assault gone better. The Wall Street Journal accused Iran of being behind the attack. U.S. officials and Iran denied this.

  Saudi Arabia had warned Israel of an "explosion" because of the continued occupation, and Egypt had warned of a catastrophe. Egypt said it told Israel days before the attack that trouble was coming "very soon, and it would be big." Israel denied receiving such a warning. Michael McCaul, chairman of the US House Foreign Relations Committee, said warnings were given three days earlier.

  Inside Israel, the defense establishment told the Prime Minister that turmoil over the judicial overhaul had signaled vulnerability to adversaries. Yet the same apparatus had ignored its own detection, a year earlier, of a Hamas mass-invasion plan called "Walls of Jericho." It also missed border movements in the hours before the invasion.

  The New York Times reported that Israeli officials had obtained detailed attack plans more than a year before the attack. The document laid out the size and location of Israeli forces. It described a large-scale rocket assault, drones to knock out surveillance cameras and automated guns along the border, and gunmen invading, including with paragliders. The Times wrote that Hamas "followed the blueprint with shocking precision." The document circulated widely among military and intelligence leaders, who largely dismissed it as beyond Hamas's capabilities. It was unclear whether the political leadership was told.

  In July 2023, a member of the Israeli signals intelligence unit told her superiors that Hamas was preparing an assault. She said, "I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary." An Israeli colonel ignored her concerns.

  The Shin Bet investigation concluded that the agency failed to give the warning that could have prevented the massacre. Its head convened an assessment in the early hours of the 7th of October. Only a low-level warning was issued, and a small team trained to stop limited attacks was sent south. The report said Hamas counterintelligence had been highly effective at blocking intelligence gathering in Gaza. Shin Bet had also told the Prime Minister that Hamas was not deterred.

  Haaretz found that the IDF had cut funding and manpower for watching Hamas. It focused mainly on rocket sites and ignored training, troop movements and the Hamas military leadership. Exercises simulating Hamas attacks found the Gaza division's response lacking. Dissent among officers was discouraged. A BBC investigation also found that senior IDF officers repeatedly ignored surveillance warnings.

  Haaretz also reported that Shin Bet and IDF commanders discussed a possible threat to the Nova music festival near kibbutz Re'im just hours before the attack. The festival's organizers were not warned.

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• 4. Breaching the Border

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  Deif claimed that more than 5,000 rockets were fired from Gaza in the first 20 minutes. Israeli sources counted 4,300 projectiles, which killed twelve people and injured dozens, most of them from the Bedouin community. Explosions were reported in Gedera, Herzliya, Beersheba, Tel Aviv and Ashkelon. Sirens sounded in Jerusalem, Rehovot, Rishon LeZion and at Palmachim Airbase. In the evening, Hamas fired about 150 more rockets, with explosions reported in Yavne, Givatayim, Bat Yam and Beit Dagan.

  Around 6,000 militants and civilians crossed from Gaza at 119 places, according to a revised IDF report. It counted 3,800 fighters from the elite Nukhba forces and 2,200 civilians and other militants. Another 1,000 Gazans fired rockets, bringing the total on Hamas's side to 7,000. The crossing used trucks, pickups, motorcycles, bulldozers, speedboats and powered paragliders.

  At the Sderot police station, 30 policemen and civilians were killed. Early in the attack, the station's computer systems were destroyed. That disabled communication and delayed the response. Videos on social media showed masked gunmen in black fatigues firing from pickup trucks in Sderot, a burning Israeli tank, and militants driving Israeli military vehicles.

  Some militants wore body cameras, presumably for propaganda. The New York Times published recordings of Hamas commanders during the attack. One commander is heard saying, "Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them on TV channels to the whole world."

  Israeli first responders said they recovered documents from militants' bodies with orders to attack civilians, including elementary schools and a youth center, and to take hostages for later negotiations. The UN's Pramila Patten and the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that the authenticity of these documents could not be substantiated.

  The National Resistance Brigades, armed wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, confirmed it took part. Its spokesman Abu Khaled said it lost three fighters against the IDF. The PFLP and the Lions' Den group voiced support and mobilized their troops. Israel accused nine UNRWA employees of taking part, and after a months-long internal investigation they were fired for possible involvement.

  By the morning, Israeli media reported that seven communities, including Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, Magen, Be'eri and Sufa, had come under Hamas control. So had the Erez Crossing. Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said there were 21 active high-confrontation locations in southern Israel. A later Israeli intelligence document, reported by the Times, found breaches of the fence in over 30 separate places.

  Not every plan worked. A Hamas unit aimed for Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, 13 km from Gaza, hoping to free Palestinian inmates. One cell got lost and ended up in Sderot. A second, ordered to push to Ashkelon from Zikim, was gunned down there by Israeli security forces.

  Qassam Brigades militants also reached the Bedouin city of Rahat, 30 km from Gaza. It was the furthest extent of the incursions. Over a month later, Israeli police arrested two militants there.

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• 5. Festival and Communities

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  At the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, an open-air festival near kibbutz Re'im, 364 civilians were killed and many more wounded. At least 40 hostages were also taken. Around sunrise, at 6:30, rockets were noticed in the sky. Around 7:00, a siren sounded and festival-goers began to flee.

  Armed militants on motorcycles, trucks and powered paragliders then surrounded the grounds and fired on people escaping. Attendees who hid in bomb shelters, bushes and orchards were killed there. Those who reached the road were trapped in a traffic jam while militants shot at vehicles. Some wounded people were executed at point-blank range. The massacre has been described as the largest terror attack in Israel's history.

  Near kibbutz Nir Oz, about 2 km from the Gaza border, a small trance festival called Psyduck drew around 100 people. Militants killed 17 Israelis there. Some were shot at the site and others while trying to reach nearby kibbutzim. Most survivors hid under small bushes until the IDF rescued them a few hours later.

  Kfar Aza, a kibbutz about 3 km from the border, had more than 950 residents when around 250 Hamas militants attacked it. They killed 62 residents and abducted 19 hostages. Militants fortified themselves in houses, and it took the IDF nearly three days to regain full control.

  At Be'eri, around 70 militants attacked on the morning of the assault. At least 130 people died, including women, children and infants. That was 10% of the community's residents. Dozens of homes were burned. Peace activist Vivian Silver, first believed to have been taken hostage, was later confirmed to have been killed there.

  About 90 militants entered kibbutz Ein HaShlosha, killing four civilians, looting and burning houses. An 80-year-old Argentinian-Israeli woman died when her home was set on fire. A six-hour standoff followed with the residents' security team, whose leader, in his sixties, was killed in the firefight. Thirty survivors were found in the kibbutz three days later, 14 of them Thai nationals. At kibbutz Alumim, militants killed 16 or 17 Thai and Nepalese employees.

  The moshav of Yakhini had a security coordinator who was on holiday in Thailand. He directed its 18-person protection team remotely. Seven people were casualties there, including a border police officer, before the Yamam and Sayeret Matkal units arrived and killed the attackers.

  At Nir Am, 25-year-old security coordinator Inbal Rabin-Lieberman and her uncle Ami led a guard detail. They killed several militants trying to reach a nearby chicken farm and deterred the rest. No resident was harmed.

  Militants also struck two military posts. Fighting was reported at the Re'im base, headquarters of the Gaza Division, at 10 a.m. Hamas reportedly took control of it and captured several soldiers before the IDF regained it later that day. Outside Nahal Oz, an attack on a base left 66 soldiers dead and seven taken hostage. An IDF fire investigation found that militants ignited substances releasing toxic gases at the base and in civilian locations.

  In Ofakim, 47 people were killed. Many residents are working-class Jews of North African descent. Militants targeted the older parts of town, where homes lacked individual bomb shelters. Locals said invaders shot people trying to reach communal shelters. Police led by Chief Superintendent Jayar Davidov fought a shootout there, and Davidov and three of his men were killed. The IDF later rescued two Israeli hostages in the suburb of Urim.

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• 6. Hostages and the Dead

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  On the 16th of October, Hamas said it was holding 250 hostages and had taken them to force Israel to release Palestinian prisoners. Earlier, on the day of the attack, it had announced it held enough Israeli soldiers to force a prisoner swap. Almost half of the hostages were foreign nationals or held more than one citizenship. Some were Negev Bedouins.

  Some hostages, including three members of the Bibas family, were later handed to other militant groups. Palestinian Islamic Jihad ended up holding at least 30, though it is unclear whether it or Hamas first seized them. Ariel Merari said the raiders were ordered to kidnap as many people as possible, and deliberately chose people whose fate would weigh on Israeli public opinion.

  In Be'eri, up to 50 people were taken hostage and freed after an 18-hour standoff between militants and the IDF. On the 11th of October, the Qassam Brigades released a video appearing to show three hostages, a woman and two children, freed near a fence. Israel dismissed it as "theatrics." American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among those kidnapped.

  Yedioth Ahronoth photographer Roy Edan was reported missing and likely captured with his child in Kfar Aza. His wife had been killed, and two of their other children hid in a closet until rescued. Ten days later, his body was identified among the dead there.

  The first count put the dead at up to 1,400. On the 10th of November, Israel lowered the figure to 1,200 after realizing that some badly burned bodies were those of Hamas fighters. At the end of May 2024, social security data brought it to 1,189. That count is 810 civilians, including 71 foreign nationals, and 379 members of the security forces. Other tallies differ by a few dozen. Over 3,400 people were wounded, and about 70 of the dead were Arab Israelis, mostly Negev Bedouins.

  Bilha Inon was classed as missing until the 6th of August 2024. The IDF then confirmed she died at Netiv HaAsara, with her husband. The oldest victim was Moshe Ridler, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor from kibbutz Holit. The youngest was Naama Abu Rashed, a Bedouin-Israeli baby delivered in an emergency procedure after her nine-months-pregnant mother was shot and killed. The baby survived for 14 hours.

  The dead included former Hapoel Tel Aviv striker Lior Asulin at the Re'im festival and Ofir Libstein, head of the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council. Colonel Yonatan Steinberg, commander of the Nahal Brigade, was killed near Kerem Shalom. Peace activist Hayim Katsman died in Holit, and Israel Hayom photographer Yaniv Zohar died in Nahal Oz.

  Chen Kugel, head of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, said hundreds of bodies arrived "beyond recognition." Bodies were brought chaotically to the Shura base and to Abu Kabir, and the mix of military, police and civilian teams caused confusion. Pathologists processed bone fragments from fires and a blood-soaked baby mattress.

  Weeks later, once conventional searches were exhausted, the IDF asked the Israel Nature and Parks Authority to track the flight paths of vultures. That led to at least five more bodies. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority divided burned rooms into grids and extracted bone shards, recovering the remains of at least ten victims. At one house, they found a bloodstain under ash that outlined a body, later identified by DNA as Meni Godard.

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• 7. Contested Accounts

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  Reports of sexual violence on the 7th of October have been among the most contested parts of the record. Israeli women and girls were reportedly raped, assaulted and mutilated, which Hamas denies. In late December 2023, a New York Times investigation titled Screams Without Words reported at least seven locations where women and girls were sexually assaulted or mutilated. It drew on video, photographs, phone GPS data and interviews with more than 150 people. The Intercept reported criticism of the piece, inside and outside the newspaper, over discrepancies in witness accounts and lax evidentiary standards.

  In April 2024, Haaretz cited a source saying that bodies at the Shura base showed no signs of sexual relations or genital mutilation. It also reported that a shortage of forensic pathologists meant at most a quarter could be fully examined. Israeli pathologists later clarified that all bodies were examined, though some were disfigured or burned. Haaretz also noted that some witness testimony, including a claimed stabbing of a pregnant woman, was later discredited.

  In March 2024, UN envoy Pramila Patten reported "reasonable grounds" to believe sexual assaults, including rape and gang rape, took place in multiple locations. Her visit was a fact-finding mission, not a full investigation, so she could not attribute the violations. The UN Commission of Inquiry reported on the 12th of June 2024 a "pattern indicative of sexual violence" by Palestinian forces. It found no evidence they were ordered to commit it. It also found that Israel had committed sexual violence and torture. It could not independently verify testimony of genital mutilation, citing a lack of access, and it judged some specific allegations false or contradictory. Israel refused to cooperate.

  By January 2025, a former head of the security cases division in Israel's Southern District prosecutor's office said no case was being filed, for lack of evidence and complainants. On the 12th of May 2026, the Israeli Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children published Silenced No More, a roughly 290-page report. It called sexual and gender-based violence "systematic, widespread, and integral" and identified thirteen recurring patterns.

  Antony Blinken said Netanyahu's government privately showed him photographs of what he called depravity. Several other accounts of atrocities did not hold up. An IDF commander told an i24NEWS reporter that 40 babies had been killed. Two babies are known to have died. A ZAKA volunteer described bound and burned groups of children, but Haaretz found the list of dead did not match his claims. Blinken repeated the same volunteer's account of a family at a breakfast table in Be'eri. Haaretz reported that no children aged 6 or 7 were killed there. Sara Netanyahu wrote to Jill Biden that a heavily pregnant woman had been taken hostage. The woman was a Thai worker who was not pregnant.

  Haaretz summed up its review by saying most testimonies are supported by extensive evidence, while a few have been proved untrue. It confirmed that fighters desecrated corpses and that two or three decapitations occurred. One was Adir Tahar, a 19-year-old Golani Brigade soldier killed in combat. His head was taken to Gaza and later found in an ice cream store's freezer.

  Israeli security agencies released videos of alleged confessions by captured attackers. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights Israel said these were likely extracted under torture. Human Rights Watch separately reported two cases of militants using Israeli civilians as human shields. In Nahal Oz, 17-year-old Tomer Arava Eliaz was used to move between homes and was later found dead.

  Several Israeli sources said infants were found beheaded in Kfar Aza. The Israeli government could not confirm it, and several investigations found it untrue. Le Monde concluded the claim was false but said it became a significant weapon in the information war. It said Israel did little to fight the story and often used it. Some opponents of Israel used the false claim to deny the killings. One assessment of the rumor reads, "Denied internationally, the rumor remains alive and well within Israel."

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• 8. Response and Reaction

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  The first Israeli helicopters, launched from northern Israel, reached the fighting an hour after it began. Israel struggled to tell which outposts and communities were occupied, and to distinguish militants from soldiers and civilians on the ground. In a televised broadcast, Netanyahu said, "We are at war." He later threatened to "turn Gaza into a deserted island" and urged its residents to "leave now."

  The IDF declared a state of emergency within 80 km of the Gaza border. Israel's Security Cabinet voted for the "destruction of the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad." The Israel Electric Corporation, which supplies up to 80% of Gaza's electricity, cut power to the area. Israel launched a bombing campaign and invaded Gaza on the 27th of October.

  A December 2023 Ynet article described an "immense and complex quantity" of friendly-fire incidents that day. Helicopter crews hit about 300 targets in four hours. Militants had been told not to run, so the air force would think they were Israelis. By about 9 a.m., some helicopters fired without prior authorization.

  In January 2024, Yedioth Ahronoth concluded that the IDF applied the Hannibal Directive, ordering units to stop "at all costs" any attempt to return to Gaza, even with hostages. Around 70 burnt-out vehicles lay on roads leading to Gaza. A UN Commission report in June 2024 found "strong indications" of its use. It said two instances likely killed up to 14 Israeli civilians. Haaretz reported a 7:18 a.m. command, "Hannibal at Erez," to dispatch an unmanned assault drone. At 11:22 a.m., the Gaza Division was told, "Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza." In the Be'eri house of Pessi Cohen, 14 hostages were inside when the IDF attacked, and 13 were killed. Air Force Colonel Nof Erez called it "a mass Hannibal." The IDF says it knows of no civilians hurt in its bombardments of the border area.

  Khaled Mashal, former chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, called the attack legitimate resistance. He said, "We know very well the consequences of our operation on Oct. 7." Khalil al-Hayya said it put the Palestinian issue "back on the table." Ghazi Hamad said, "The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth." Asked about the Re'im festival, official Mousa Abu Marzook called it a "coincidence." Hamas denied killing any children. In January 2024, its report "Our Narrative" accepted "some faults" but denied deliberately targeting civilians. At an emergency meeting in Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians had the right to defend themselves against the terror of settlers and occupation troops.

  The governments of 44 countries denounced the attack as terrorism. Some Arab and Muslim-majority countries blamed Israel's occupation as the root cause. Then-US president Joe Biden called it "the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust." Historian Enzo Traverso and scholar Raz Segal warned against invoking the Holocaust. Segal condemned the "weaponizations of Holocaust memory." Several international law and genocide experts argued that the assault amounted to genocide. Some legal experts proposed a new crime, "kinocide," for the targeting of families.

  The Center for Strategic and International Studies called it the deadliest per capita terrorist attack. The war that followed displaced 300,000 Israelis.

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