Return to Be'eri: What I learned from visits to Be’eri since Oct. 7- comment

It is fitting that the Israel Defense Forces’ first inquiry into the failures of October 7 should focus on Kibbutz Be’eri. This is one of the sites where a large number of civilians were killed. It also symbolizes much of what went terribly wrong on October 7.

The findings confirm much of what was known about that nightmarish day. “The inquiry team determined that the IDF failed in its mission to protect the residents of Kibbutz Be’eri,” the report says.

My experience with Be’eri began on October 16, nine days after the massacre. Journalists were invited to visit the site and meet with IDF soldiers who were familiar with the battle there. We arrived at the yellow gate that is at the front entrance of most kibbutzim in Israel. The gate was half-open and burned.

This was a kind of curtain raiser to the horrors within. By the time we arrived, the dead had been cleared away and the homes had been checked for explosives and booby traps.

However, much of the place appeared as it was after the battle. The white Isuzu truck the terrorists had used was sitting on the side of an access road. Near it there were many types of gauze and medical supplies. Were these brought by the terrorists or the first responders? Some of the detritus around the truck had Arabic writing; it appeared to have come from Gaza.

There were burned and destroyed homes. One area looked like a tank had driven through it. There were a large number of shell casings on the road.

The place felt like it was in transition, from the day of battle to becoming a kind of living memorial to the disaster here. It was also quiet.

There were no civilians around. Instead, the kibbutz was full of soldiers, resting in open areas and waiting to be sent into Gaza.

Returning to Kibbutz Be'eri 

I came back to Be’eri more than six months later to interview a soldier who had fought in the battle to recapture the kibbutz. He was the deputy commander of the 7th armored brigade.

LT.-COL. KARM NBWANI was wounded in the battle. When I met him, the parking lot near the kibbutz was full of cars left by reservists serving in Gaza.

We sat down for coffee. A bicycle shop was now open. This area before October 7 was a major center for people who like to go on serious bike rides. The open shop showed that life was returning.

Through the interview with the deputy commander, I began to learn more about the battle for the kibbutz. He told me about how he had entered it with a handful of soldiers to help save the residents. He had gone back several times and was wounded in a battle. It was a harrowing story.

We managed to meet one of the people from the kibbutz who had helped him when he was wounded. He was closing his own personal circle by returning and I was learning more.

I went back to Be’eri a third time during a short trip to the Gaza border. I didn’t realize how far the border actually was from the kibbutz. It was a drive along a dirt road. This was the area where soldiers access the Netzarim corridor, which is controlled by the IDF south of Gaza City. The landscape was festooned with soldiers making their way back and forth.

I tried to imagine how the terrorists had been able to conquer the kibbutz. They had arrived at the front gate. Had they also traversed this area, the mile and a half to the border? Or had they come directly from Route 232 via another opening in the fence? It was then that I realized Be’eri is not that close to the Gaza border, compared to places like Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza or Magen. It’s more than a short walking distance from the border; it would take time.

The IDF’s inquiry has revealed a lot of what was already felt about the response on October 7. There were enough soldiers. They didn’t have plans for what to do in case of numerous infiltrations along twenty miles of border. There were no reserve forces. The response was slow; at Be’eri, it was very slow. It took until 1:30 p.m. to bring up any serious forces – and even when they arrived, they came piecemeal and it took time to bring them to bear against the enemy.

THE CHAOS of October 7 is not shocking when one understands what happens to military units when they are overrun and face a situation they are not prepared for. Military units work well when they are cohesive and there is a chain of command. They can perform well even if they are on their own but have initiative and enough forces.

They don’t perform well, however, when there are a handful of soldiers who show up from numerous units without commanders or orders. They don’t perform well when they are used to having air support and a mass of intelligence and are thrown, basically in the dark in terms of intelligence, into a battle they never expected and their air support is not there.

The disaster at Be’eri is a symbol of the state in general. This country has always survived in a difficult neighborhood by being prepared and by planning for the worst and keeping its enemies deterred. But it became complacent in recent decades. We’ve seen this before.

Israel slouched into the 2006 war in Lebanon also unprepared. However, in that war, the enemy was not inside the gates. The goal of Israel’s leaders since the early days of Zionism was to create self-protection units because any time the enemy got inside the gates, there would be a massacre.

This is what happened in 1920, in 1929 and in the 1930s. Israel’s early leaders always preferred to strike the first blow and fight on the enemy’s territory. Israel became complacent and let the enemy grow too strong and enter into places like Be’eri.

We should make no mistake that Be’eri represents what will happen here if the country continues down a path of arrogance and complacency. In northern Israel, the communities were evacuated because it was felt they could not be protected.

This is a betrayal of a policy going back to Ben-Gurion of defending communities, not retreating. Israel has sent the message to Iran and its proxies that it is willing to evacuate, which feeds their assertion that Israel is a temporary state. Israel must return to the North and to the borders of Gaza and stop the retreating. The army must learn from this disaster and, where necessary, people must be held accountable.

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