IDF soldiers say repeated warnings about Hamas activities were ignored before the October 7 attacks

It was a sisterhood that revolved around service: There were birthdays away from home, costume parties, TikTok dance videos and lots of laughter. Some of the young soldiers from Israel Defense Forces Unit 414 were there by volunteer, others were completing their mandatory military service after high school.

They were stationed at the Israeli base Nahal Oz, less than half a mile from Gaza, and were known as “the eyes of the military.” They monitored hundreds of security cameras overlooking the border 24 hours a day, always keeping an eye on it and always on high alert.

“It felt like something unusual was about to happen,” said Roni Lifshitz, an observer soldier with Unit 414 who happened to be on a training exercise on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise terrorist attack on Israel.

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Lifshitz said she risked serious consequences if she spoke to a news organization.

“The IDF might react. Frankly, I don’t care. They abandoned my friends, I have no reason to listen to them,” she said. “If (my friends) were here, they would talk for sure.”

According to Lifshitz, her unit reported unusual activity from Gaza every day in the days leading up to October 7. So frequently that there was apparently a running joke at the base: Who would be on duty the day Hamas attacked?

Just days before October 7, she said she saw “10 pickup trucks, 300 meters away. It was unusual to see something like that. They stopped at every Hamas post, looked at our cameras, at the fence, at the gates, and pointed,” she said. “The other was the training we saw deeper in the Gaza Strip, which was very reminiscent of a military routine: rolling over, shooting.”

Her account matches what Ori Asaf said he heard from his girlfriend, Sergeant Osher Barzilay, an intelligence officer who was killed at the Nahal Oz command center. Asaf showed ABC News text messages that Barzilay sent him just two weeks before October 7.

“All violent riots and incendiary balloons are taking place in our sector,” Barzilay wrote. “3 violent riots, people with weapons and explosives. The fence is destroyed.”

Asaf said Barzilay could not tell him everything because much of the information was classified, but he said she had repeatedly told him she had seen Hamas burying explosives near the border.

According to Lifshitz, there were warning signals, but top politicians did not take them seriously.

“We were completely ignored, they belittled us,” she said. “Nobody really listened to us, especially because I’m not an officer. Because I’m just a simple 20-year-old who knows nothing.”

Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News: “The responsibility of a government is to protect the population. That responsibility has obviously not been met. And we will have many questions, many investigations. But I have a responsibility now. The responsibility is to defeat Hamas.”

Eyal Eshel heard similar stories from his daughter Roni Eshel, who was also a member of Unit 414 and Roni Lifshitz’s best friend. She was just 19 years old at the time.

“‘Dad, the cameras on the fence aren’t working here. Dad, there’s a problem with the fence.’ Nobody came to fix it,” he said.

In a harrowing phone call obtained exclusively by ABC News, Roni Eshel can be heard telling her mother, Sharon, on September 27 that she is overwhelmed by what she sees.

“Listen, there have been infiltration attempts for three days in a row, today there was an attack in Karni, explosive devices,” she said.

Eyal Eshel took ABC News inside the remains of the Nahal Oz base and into the command center, where his daughter watched the Hamas incursion and reported on it in real time – until her cameras were neutralized.

When more than a hundred Hamas fighters finally reached the base, they set fire to the command center. Many of the young observers were trapped inside and burned alive.

“They didn’t find dog tags, they didn’t find bodies,” Eshel said. “They found parts. You know what I mean. Parts.”

There were only a few combat soldiers stationed at the base that day, trying to fend off the attackers. Lifshitz said the observation soldiers are told that their cameras are their weapons, so they are always unarmed, even when stationed so close to Gaza.

Lifshitz told us that she never had a weapon on the base and that she felt unsafe.

“They didn’t prepare us much,” she said. “I was never told where to go if terrorists came into the base.”

Eyal Eshel said the girls’ warnings were not only ignored – they were abandoned and left to fend for themselves for six hours on October 7.

When they called for help, Eshel and Lifshitz said this was the answer: “Good luck, Nahal Oz, take care of yourself, we don’t have enough soldiers to come here and save you.”

According to Israeli authorities, 15 of the observers were killed. Seven were taken hostage, according to footage released by the hostages’ families. They were handcuffed and covered in blood. Five of them remain in Gaza to this day, according to Israeli authorities.

“They are the ones who know what is going on at the border. They are on duty all the time,” said IDF Major General (Res.) Noam Tibon, who had to rescue his own family from a kibbutz on October 7. “The commanders ignored what they told them. And that is a terrible mistake, because if they had listened to them, the whole of October 7 might have looked very different.”

“That is why Nahal Oz is a symbol of failure,” he added. “Anyone responsible for this failure must go.”

In a statement to ABC News, the Israeli army said in response to a detailed list of questions about Nahal Oz: “The Israeli army is currently focused on eliminating the threat posed by the terrorist organization Hamas. Questions of this nature will be reviewed at a later date.”

In March, the Israeli army announced it would launch an internal investigation into its misconduct. The results are expected to be published at the end of August. Eight months after the death of his daughter, Eyal Eshel is still waiting for answers.

“No explanation. We are still waiting. No one from the army has made any explanation,” he said.

With no end to the war in sight, Lifshitz is constantly thinking about how many lives she believes could have been saved – if only someone had listened to her unit.

“If someone had given the order to bring in more troops, to station them on the border, to equip all forces with firepower and tanks – that is, to provide additional forces to defend the kibbutzim, which is exactly what was supposed to happen – then perhaps so many people would not have been killed and the damage would not have been done,” she said.

IDF soldiers say repeated warnings of Hamas activity were ignored before the Oct. 7 attacks. Originally published on abcnews.go.com