Nahal Oz civilian emergency response team left with no guns on Oct. 7

The Kibbutz Nahal Oz civilian emergency response team was not able to respond to the October 7 Hamas attack on the Kibbutz because their guns were not accessible to them, a member of the team said on Thursday.

“When they made the [anti-tunnel] barrier [along the Gaza border] in April of 2021, they took our guns,” said civilian response team head Barry Meirovitch, speaking to the unofficial probe of October 7.

The probe was founded last month by families of those killed on October 7, representatives from the attacked kibbutzim, and civil society groups in order to investigate the events behind the attack. One of the primary goals of the committee, which is composed of legal and security experts, is to initiate the foundation of a state probe, a notion that was shot down by Israel’s political echelon.

What difference would weapons have made?

“If we had weapons on October 7, then some of [the response team] would have been killed, but we would have saved more people,” said Meirovitch who has commanded the team since 2006.

Meirovitch explained that the team was forced to lock their weapons in the kibbutz armory and that because electricity was out on the morning of October 7 and the safe was electric, the team was left without guns.

“We found ourselves in the most absurd situation. When it came down to it, I had all the gear, including a radio, a flak jacket, and magazines, but I didn’t have a gun.”

Meirovitch highlighted that the team was concerned the guns were going to be in the armory for years. “We always wondered what we would do,” he said, explaining that running to the armory in an emergency seems far-fetched.

When asked by the probe committee why the guns were taken away, Meirovitch said that due to recent thefts, they had been notified that they must either lock them to the wall in their homes or in the armory.

“No one was willing to put their weapons on the wall,” he said. “Our kids don’t need to see weapons at home.”

“Weapons were stolen from the army,” interjected a member of the probe’s committee. “Most of the guns were stolen from the army, and they [the civilian response team] were told to lock their guns in the armory.”

When asked if they had raised this issue with the relevant authorities, Meirovitch said that they had. “We went to all the authorities. We sat in front of the IDF chief of staff for three hours.”

Meirovitch expanded on the impact of completing the barrier on security procedures in the area.

“After they created the barrier, they slowly started to take the soldiers out of all the communities. We were among the last communities where they took the soldiers out.”

“They said that there is a barrier and there is someone protecting us, and there are cameras, and there is the iron dome. At the end of the day, all of those means made the army distance itself.”

Everyone was convinced that the barrier would protect them, and in one moment Hamas was able to get around it, he said, stating that he thinks this is one of Israel’s biggest failures.

The IDF was beside them, but not really in front of them, Meirovitch said. “It had cameras in front of us and all kinds of [military equipment and technology], but physically, it was not really at a high enough level of preparedness.”

He expanded on the role of the emergency response team and how their coordination with the IDF works.

“Our purpose was to provide a first response,” he explained, adding that while they trained occasionally, including with the IDF, they were a volunteer force.