The Palestinian militant group Hamas took Israel completely by surprise on Saturday with an unprecedented attack that has already seen more than 700 Israelis massacred and more than 100 dragged into Gaza as hostages.
The attacks, which former Israeli military general Yaakov Amidror said were made possible by “a colossal failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus,” took place by land and air, with Hamas fighters flying into Israel using paragliders while other units cut in. wires in border fences and bulldozed walls to enter the country;
Horrifying videos shot by helmet-mounted GoPro cameras and smartphones by Hamas rebels show unsuspecting Israeli soldiers being shot in their barracks, while others are beaten, tied up and driven away or herded into cars and pickup trucks.
In other videos, Hamas fighters are seen slipping across the border and landing near a village where a music festival is being held, where they cold-bloodedly maul about 260 unarmed partygoers.
Now, with Israel’s security services still reeling, the Defense Forces and Air Force have hit back with ferocity with airstrikes and rocket attacks on the Gaza Strip that they say have hit more than 1,000 Hamas targets in the past two days, though social media videos are spreading. Media showed how rockets left Palestinian civilians screaming in the streets as residential buildings were destroyed.
About 1,000 armed men cut wires from border fences, bulldozed walls and even used speedboats to enter Israeli territory.
Horrifying videos shot by Hamas rebels on helmet-mounted GoPro cameras and smartphones show Israeli soldiers being shot in their barracks while civilians are beaten, tied up and taken away.
Hamas gunmen storm the compound across the border
Hamas militants massacred hundreds of people, but captured dozens more
Although many Israelis were shot, some were rounded up and forcibly removed from Israel and taken back across the Gaza border as hostages.
Hamas fighters bypassed Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip by paragliding in, according to the Israeli military (pictured: Alleged paraglider crossing into Israel.
Hamas drone controllers directed explosives into Israeli guard posts and observation towers, disrupting their ability to track where the attacks were coming from.
Israel’s military said hundreds of Hamas militants attacked around 6:30 a.m. Saturday on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, in an attack 50 years after the outbreak of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
The Islamist group has fired thousands of rockets into Israel without warning, attacking military and civilian targets.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 militants from Gaza invaded Israel.
Most used explosives, bulldozers and wire to blow holes in the border walls and fences that house more than 2 million Palestinians in camps in the Gaza Strip and flood into the cities of Ashkelon, Ofakim and Sderot, as well as many other smaller settlements.
Meanwhile, drone operators have directed explosives at Israeli guard posts and observation towers, disrupting their ability to monitor where the attacks are coming from.
While civilians and soldiers in Israeli cities faced a lightning ground attack, hundreds of revelers at the Supernova music festival near the Gaza border were hit by airstrikes.
The deathly rave music, which survivors said had “good vibes” at first, played throughout the night until around 6.30am, when the siren began sounding the missile warning.
Festival goers knew there was a risk of rocket attacks. But they didn’t expect gunmen to come overhead, hovering in paragliders before landing and storming the site, firing indiscriminately into the crowd.
Footage posted on Tiktok, taken shortly after sunrise, saw the camera zoom in on gray dots in the air, which turned out to be Palestinian militants.
Moments later, the dancing stops and horror ensues as festival goers are forced to run for their lives as Hamas gunmen open fire.
Meanwhile, footage released by Hamas militants today shows their troops learning to fly paragliders and practice their attack.landing, weapons drawn, before entering buildings marked with the Jewish Star of David.
In the shocking video, fighters from the Falcon Squadron were seen walking through the sand at dawn wearing the equipment that was to be used in action.
The video shows them starting the engines with parachutes spread out on a sandbar before one of the runways carries the two men.
Several paragliders can then be seen hovering above the desert scrub in low light before they land next to a village with guns drawn and storm the buildings, opening fire on the targets.
Israeli festivalgoers could be seen dancing in the desert at dawn on Saturday, completely unaware that within minutes, members of the militant group Hamas were about to descend from the sky and wreak havoc.
Hamas fighters are seen standing outside armored trucks as they carry out their attack
Armored vehicles stormed border checkpoints and compounds near the Gaza Strip
Hamas has used explosives, bulldozers and barbed wire to blow holes in border walls and fences that have housed more than 2 million Palestinians in camps in the Gaza Strip and flooded into the cities of Ashkelon, Ofakim and Sderot, as well as many other smaller settlements.
Footage released by Hamas militants earlier today shows their troops learning how to fly a paraglider and practice their attack.
As of Monday morning, official estimates put the number of Israeli civilians and soldiers killed at more than 700, a huge number for a country of less than 10 million people.
“It’s a colossal failure of the southern intelligence system and the military apparatus,” said retired military general Yaakov Amidror, who served as Israel’s national security adviser from 2011 to 2013.
But beyond the operational failure of Israel’s vaunted intelligence services to detect a well-planned attack and the army’s inability to block it, Israel’s broader stance on Hamas was completely flawed, Amidror said.
“We made a big mistake, myself included, in believing that a terrorist organization could change its DNA,” he told reporters.
“We heard from our friends around the world that they were behaving more responsibly, and we believed it in our own stupidity,” said Amidror, currently a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Saturday that when he was in charge of the military’s Southern Command in 2009, he wanted to “break the neck of Hamas” but was stopped by the political echelon.
Now, as the man who, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, decides the course of the war, Gallant was no longer subject to restraints.
“We will change the reality in the Gaza Strip,” he promised.
“What was before will be no more.”
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