October 7: The Black Sabbath
On Saturday October 7 at 6:30 a.m. rocket alert sirens went off in southern Israel. While distressing, it seemed to be just another one of Hamas’s periodic rocket barrages. Soon, however, reports of something much larger began popping up on social media.
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TVs were turned on across the country. Viewers were greeted with video taken by residents of Sderot and other Israeli towns and villages of white pickup trucks filled with heavily armed terrorists dressed in black and wearing the distinctive green headbands of Hamas. Other videos showed powered paragliders piloted by heavily armed terrorists landing in Israeli territory. This was the beginning of a massive unprovoked attack by 3,000 terrorists belonging to Iran-backed Hamas which controls Gaza.
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Shortly after the attack began, Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’ military arm, claimed responsibility for the attack in a video.
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The rocket attack was a diversion. The main attack involved motorcycles, boats, paragliders, pickup trucks. Over the next eight hours, these death squads systematically murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Over 5,600 were wounded, hundreds critically. Over 239 people — including babies, children, women, the elderly, and the disabled — were kidnapped and taken hostage in Gaza where they remain incommunicado. Over 100 Israeli Arabs — Muslims, Bedouin, Druze, Christians — were also killed in the massacre. Hamas made no distinctions.
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The Nova music festival — an all-night rave — was attacked by the terrorists. The Hamas death squads broke into the peaceful festival with machinegun-armed trucks and paragliders and murdered some 260 unarmed mostly young people, and kidnapped some of the survivors. The terrorists paraded the naked body of a young woman in the streets of Gaza to the cheers of crowds.
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The terrorists recorded and celebrated the attack using go-pro cameras and body cams. They used the personal phones of their victims to record the slaughter, even uploading the ghastly videos to their personal social media accounts or sending them to the victims’ families.
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Another 300,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in southern Israel, and in northern Israel, too, where another Iranian proxy — Hezbollah — has been raining rockets and mortars onto Israelis communities on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
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The fighting continued until the next day. Some 30 police officers were killed battling Hamas terrorists who had taken over the Sderot police station. Hundreds of terrorists remained at-large. An intensive search was underway and numerous fire fights broke out.
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October 7, 2023 will forever be remembered as Ha’shabbat Ha’shahor, The Black Sabbath (Saturday being the Jewish sabbath), the biggest single massacre in Israeli history.
The IDF’s Slow Response
October 7 was not only a shabbat (sabbath) but also a major Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah. As was routine for Jewish holidays, many IDF soldiers were home with their families, leaving the Gaza area lightly defended. After years of rocket attacks (tens of thousands since 2001), and after Hamas violently seized control of Gaza in 2007, Israel built a border fence with high-tech sensors and remotely controlled gun emplacements.
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The Hamas terrorists were trained in Iran. They overcame the high-tech defensive barrier with stunning precision leaving the Israeli army blinded to the unfolding attack. Hamas terrorists attacked a number of army outposts, catching the soldiers off guard and killing scores. In some heroic instances, soldiers were able to fend off the attackers.
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Yet, hours went by before the first IDF and police unites arrived on the scene. Some Israeli residents who were armed were able to hold off the attackers until help arrived. Individual soldiers from different units rushed to the scene, created makeshift squads, and fought against the terrorists saving many lives. Their losses, however, were heavy.
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