Israelis demand accountability over 7 October failures three years after attacks

As the sky began to lighten over Israel's border with Gaza on Wednesday, the people of Kfar Aza moved silently towards the armoury at the centre of the kibbutz.

It was there, shortly after 07:00 on 7 October 2023, that Hamas-led attackers killed half the community's 14-member civil defence squad. They were among 64 killed and 19 kidnapped from the community that day.

The pain of those attacks is still fresh here. But three years on, there are questions about who else should pay the price for Israel's security failure.

"I need my country to take responsibility," said Inbar Goldstein, whose brother and niece were killed, and four other relatives kidnapped from Kfar Aza.

The 7 October attack was the deadliest Israel had suffered since its creation in 1948. About 1,200 people were killed across southern Israel by gunmen who broke through the border fence and attacked communities there. Another 251 people were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Three years on from Israel's biggest security failure, there is still no independent state inquiry into how it was allowed to happen.

And the man in charge at the time of that failure - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - is running for election again, with the same campaign promise: to be stronger and tougher than anyone else in protecting Israel from its enemies.

"Nobody investigated the roots [of the attack]. It didn't start or end on October 7th - it's a long process of abandonment," Goldstein said.

Aside from Hamas's responsibility for the attack itself, there are growing questions in Israel around what caused the country's intelligence failure, what information was passed to military and political leaders in the run-up to the attacks, and what Netanyahu himself knew.

For months beforehand, young female soldiers posted at bases along the Gaza border to watch for suspicious activity had warned their superiors about possible preparations for an attack.

Among them was Roni Eshel. She was killed with 14 other members of her unit when gunmen overran their base at Nahal Oz, just next to Kfar Aza.

"There are so many questions," her uncle Elad Levy told me. "Were the Egyptians warning the prime minister? The Emiratis? Were there no other warnings Netanyahu ignored? We need to find out what happened – not just on the day, but the year before, and five years before that."

"The truth should be clear," he continued. "If we don't inquire into this, it will happen again and again."

They were Israel's 'eyes on the border' - their warnings went unheard

Over the past three years, there have been mounting reports of warnings being given to Netanyahu - by his own security chief, as well as by regional neighbours – which he denies.

Last month, Israel's Haaretz newspaper published extracts from a new book, alleging that the leader of the United Arab Emirates had called Netanyahu 10 days before the attack to warn of Hamas plans for a major operation.

Netanyahu's office has dismissed the report as "an absolute lie" and has said he will sue the newspaper.

Amir Ohana, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party, said in a social media video last month that it was "preposterous and absurd" to suggest that Netanyahu could have known about the attack when the former Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, had only told a handful of people.

Israel's prime minister, he said, had since reshaped the Middle East and did not give up, "even when voices inside and outside Israel called on him to stop".

Netanyahu has blamed his own security chiefs for the failures that led to the 7 October attacks, accusing them of deliberately choosing not to wake him in the hours beforehand, for fear that he would order a massive deployment of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and escalate the situation.

"God forbid we wake up the prime minister and he says, 'Wake up the entire IDF immediately, scramble the air force!'" he told Israel's right-wing Channel 14 television network.

"What would have happened if they had woken me? This would not have happened," he said, suggesting that his response would have better protected Israel from the attacks.

Yaacov Katz, a journalist and author of several books on Israel's defence, has written about the growing concerns over Hamas activity that emerged in the hours leading up to the assault.

In his book, While Israel Slept, he describes calls between senior military figures and intelligence chiefs in the early hours of the morning, the sudden recall of commanders from leave, and the dispatch of an elite intelligence unit to the border.