The New York Times published an investigation Saturday on how unprepared the IDF was for the Hamas invasion on October 7.
According to the report, the IDF had no formal plan for such an invasion. Soldiers communicated by WhatsApp and used social media networks to choose targets in the field. Helicopter pilots were asked to choose targets based on media reports and Telegram channels.
The elite Maglan unit, which specializes in missions deep within hostile territory, arrived at battles without clear objectives. A few of their soldiers were aided by a resident of Netivot who had been following Hamas video publications and calls for help from residents and passed the information on to the soldiers. In another incident, soldiers gathered the information themselves. A team commander told helicopter pilots to choose targets from news feeds and Telegram channels.
The report, citing videos from the day of the invasion and conversations with soldiers and officers past and present, that the IDF did not even have a battle plan to respond to a large-scale Hamas attack on Israeli soil, according to current and former soldiers and officers. If such a plan existed on a shelf somewhere, the soldiers said, no one had trained on it and nobody followed it. The soldiers that day made it up as they went along.
Even during the invasion, significant forces did not understand the scale of the incident, and special forces had to either deploy on their own authority to wherever they could find an engagement or were rushed southward with only the most basic of equipment.
During the invasion, the IDF estimated that Hamas was able to create only a few breaches along the border wall to enter Israel. In practice, more than thirty breaches were used by terrorists invading Israel. The report claims that the ISA had at that time abandoned all attempts at other activity, and ISA director Ronen Bar had instead ordered all armed members of the organization to rush to the war zone.