'IDF bases failed training just before October 7' - parents of slain observer

Just 72 hours before the Hamas attack on October 7, IDF bases in the South failed a training exercise, Eyal and Sharon Eshel told the civilian October 7 probe on Tuesday. Eyal and Sharon are the parents of slain field observer Roni Eshel, who was murdered at Nahal Oz on October 7.

On the Wednesday before October 7, there was a surprise training exercise in the IDF Gaza Division, Eyal told the committee, explaining that all bases and outposts involved failed except one, allowing unauthorized people to enter the base and, in some cases, steal keys and maps.

“We are talking about Wednesday morning, 72 hours before Saturday, October 7, before those soldiers were burned [to death].”

Eyal also told the committee that the IDF had lied to him when presenting information about his daughter’s death.

IDF representatives came to his home with a poster board showing a sketch of the operations center where Roni was killed. In the sketch, an exit door appeared from one of the rooms adjacent to the operations room. This room does not exist in reality, said Eyal.

"I said you are lying to us," Eyal told the committee he said to the representatives.

Roni’s parents told the committee other disturbing stories Roni had shared with them in previous months. Around three weeks before October 7, when one of the soldiers serving with Roni had a birthday, someone her parents described as a Hamas terrorist held up a sign from over the border that read “Happy birthday.”

It is important to understand just how much information Hamas had about the base, the parents emphasized, adding that they knew everything that went on in the outpost, as well as its layout.

Roni also told her parents that Hamas terrorists would regularly approach the border fence, sometimes placing charges along it and that IDF forces were not allowed to fire on them.

Roni also told her parents in the months before October 7 that there was going to be a war, they told the probe.

She told her parents that after the High Holy Days, there would be a war that included taking soldiers hostages, explaining to them that this was because of the timing of Hamas elections.

The probe, which was announced in July, is composed of security and legal experts and it will investigate the “events before October 7, which formed the foundation for the biggest security failure in the state’s history,” and examine the failures of the military and political systems, it said.

One of the primary goals of the probe’s committee is to initiate the foundation of a state probe, which was denied by Israel’s political echelon.