Could critical thinking and logic have mitigated the horrors of October 7 - opinion

While it’s true that, in hindsight, it’s easy to see massive miscalculations that were made, when relating to the tragic events of October 7, none seem to be more obvious than the blunders that took place at Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

As new information emerges surrounding the invasion of the Gaza border communities by Hamas terrorists on that fated day, a shocking disclosure, published in this weekend’s Jerusalem Post, makes everyone wonder how the most minimal of common sense, logic, and foresight went missing, much to the detriment of those who lost their lives trying to defend others.

In an article titled “Nahal Oz civil response unit left helpless on October 7” (Jerusalem Post, August 30), we read what led up to the most perilous and horrifying set of circumstances unimaginable – a documented testimony of why 66 soldiers and 15 kibbutz members were killed along with another eight who were kidnapped.

Similar to other kibbutz communities, Nahal Oz had a civilian emergency response team, which should have been a major deterring factor in saving the lives of these people, but, due to a lack of critical thinking by those who had been tasked with defending their members, the kibbutz underwent a slaughter that is almost too painful to comprehend.

According to the account, given by the head of that civilian response team during a probe to investigate the events, prior to October 7 and for security reasons, “the team had been forced to lock their weapons in the kibbutz armory,” an area that could only be electrically accessed. Once that became impossible, due to the loss of electricity, which had been disabled by the terrorists, all of the guns were irretrievably locked away with the inability to get to them.

Ironically, this was the same horrific failure that allowed Hamas to breach Israel’s border, once the communication towers and surveillance centers had also been electronically disabled, effectively leaving the country with no southern security capabilities.

So, the question, which begs to be answered, is how smart and savvy experts in their field – people who do this for a living – didn’t employ critical thinking, described as the use of objective analysis and evaluation of an issue, in order to form a proper judgment?

Among all of the people involved in the thinking and planning in matters of security and keeping everyone safe, how is it that not one person stopped to consider what would happen if systems that relied on electricity stopped working, should there be a situation where the power was cut off?

Has our total reliance on this phenomenon, which came into being in 1752, thanks to Benjamin Franklin, been taken for granted to the point that we’ve come to believe it will never fail?

Given the uncertainty of the times in which we live, we hardly know, from day to day, if the possibility of war will befall us, or if we will suddenly find ourselves homeless refugees, similar to Ukrainians who have had to flee for their lives.

But even if events are less dramatic than that, everyone has heard that most free and democratic countries are vulnerable, not only to cyberattacks but also to an assault on their power grids, leaving them in a similar position of being at risk, unable to operate so many things on which everyone relies.

Now, at this time, when those of us who live in Israel have had to adequately prepare our bomb shelters, knowing that we might need to remain in them for hours on end, it has caused us to think long and hard as to what items we would need in order to maintain the most comfort possible, while waiting out the storm.

Based on those mental calculations, we have made sure there is plenty of water, a bucket and toilet paper, a transistor radio that works on batteries, a mattress, in the event we have to sleep there, a hand-held fan, in case it gets extremely hot, and our cellphones with a portable battery in the event we have to recharge them.

The details have been endless, but for those of us who have been forced to spend time thinking about the items most needed, it has made us feel somewhat prepared and ready in the event that a major attack should still come.

So why wasn’t the same thing done by people who claim to have the expertise in the field of security as well as preparedness in order to head off the worst of all scenarios? And if someone thought that electrical deterrents were a good idea, what was the backup plan in the likely event of a power blackout? How could we find ourselves in such a dire situation where nothing was in place to warn of an imminent onslaught?

All of this seems incomprehensible, and 11 months later we are now reeling from the tragic results of no logic, common sense, or even questioning of the efficacy of very flawed security methods which lacked a plan B.

I am fully convinced that, as parents, if we had to come up with a viable plan to best protect our precious children, we would have done a million times better than what was done by these so-called experts, in whom we put our faith and reliance. Because they miserably failed us when given the gargantuan job of making sure that our countrymen remained safe.

While there is certainly much blame to go around for the October 7 massacre, mostly focused at the prime minister, security services, and army generals, no one seems to be talking about the actual advisers, consultants, or experts who decided on the measures that were finally adopted and put into place.

Who was responsible for them?

Had a committee been set up, or were they the decisions of one person? Did anyone critique those plans or look for possible weaknesses and flaws?

It seems more than obvious that the reliance on modern, advanced technology, which is wholly reliant on the operation of electricity, is a folly of highest proportions and a gross error that must never again be made.

Sadly, it comes a bit too late for those 86 people who lost their lives at Nahal Oz, not to mention all the others in surrounding communities who might have survived had there been a fallback warning system that kicked in when the first was inoperative.

We must do much better than this going forward, because we are, indeed, our brother’s keeper.

The writer is a former Jerusalem elementary and middle school principal. She is also the author of Mistake-Proof Parenting, available on Amazon, based on the time-tested wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs.