IDF’s Fatal Mistake: Told Soldiers to ‘Go Back to Sleep’ Hours Before Hamas’s October 7 Attack
A young soldier’s unheeded warnings in the Gaza Division’s intelligence center on the eve of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack exposed a critical failure in the IDF’s response to mounting threat indicators. The dismissal of alerts, compounded by a flawed threat model and leadership inaction, allowed Hamas to execute a devastating assault.
On the night of October 6, 2023, in the intelligence command center of the IDF’s Gaza Division, a young soldier, referred to here as R., observed troubling signs and raised serious concerns about an imminent Hamas attack. Despite his conviction that the prevailing complacency was misguided, his warnings were dismissed. The division’s intelligence officer, referred to as A., was unimpressed, as he had been with prior alerts from a female non-commissioned officer in Unit 8200, known as V. Shockingly, Gaza Division Commander Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld, present at the base, did not visit the command center despite the mounting intelligence indicators. R., a non-officer under 20, stayed vigilant alongside a young female soldier, sensing a looming threat as the world was about to be upended.
R. tried to convince his superiors, but relevant female officers were told to “go back to sleep.” This dismissal echoed a broader failure: the head of the Palestinian desk at Unit 8200 did not answer calls until alarms sounded, and no additional intelligence shifts were activated. A post-attack IDF investigation revealed a stunning oversight: plotting the Gaza intelligence reports on a map could have changed everything. The Gaza Division’s threat assessment model, a sophisticated checklist designed to gauge risks, did not account for a large-scale Hamas raid, only anticipating smaller incursions. Had it been followed, an army-wide alert might have been triggered, potentially averting the catastrophe. At 6:29 AM on October 7, Hamas launched a massive assault, breaching Israel’s border at 119 points and initiating a massacre that killed 1,163 people, including 779 civilians, and saw 251 abducted, 50 of whom remain in Hamas captivity.
Senior IDF officials later acknowledged R.’s credibility, though the investigation into his warnings was inconclusive. The failure to act on his and V.’s alerts, combined with Rosenfeld’s absence from the command center, underscored a systemic breakdown rooted in the flawed assumption that Hamas was deterred. This “conceptzia” blinded the IDF to Hamas’s extensive preparations, including training camps for children, as revealed by a classified document uncovered later. The tragedy highlighted the need for a state inquiry, as internal reviews left critical questions unanswered.