Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Amihai Attali sharply criticized the IDF leadership following he publication of the investigations into the battle at Kibbutz Be'eri.
"The investigations that will be published today will also show soldiers at the tactical level who hesitated to charge on the morning of October 7, but it happened because they were waiting for backup; they could not imagine that there is no such entity called the IDF," he wrote.
''The misconception that exploded in our faces that morning at 6:29 was primarily based on absolute blindness of the military and political higher echelons. We must have met a different IDF." He noted that in contrast, "The investigations will testify to the heroism of the individual soldiers."
"Why did the failures occur, both big and small? Because we all thought that the IDF was different from what it really is. It had to be re-established that morning, and it took a lot of time. In fact, the work is still ongoing and since then, in nine months of war, the heroism, daring, and determination of the soldiers, from the division level down, are repeatedly revealed, alongside very problematic confusion in the higher ranks."
He added that on the morning of October 7, armed civilians and policemen charged the terrorists "To fill the place left by the IDF's misconceptions of a narrative of an army that does not really want to fight and is busy with explanations of why we don't need to fight. Over the years, a whole generation of senior officers has developed who are more military philosophers than lethal commanders."