Madrid/Tel Aviv/The head of the Israeli Army, Eyal Zamir, compared this Wednesday the failures recorded in the context of the attacks of the October 7, 2023 perpetrated by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and other Palestinian terrorist groups with those that preceded the Yom Kippur War in 1973, while warning of possible new “surprise attacks.”
On the occasion of the commemoration events for the third anniversary of 7-O, Zamir visited a new Army training division along with several senior officials of the Armed Forces, from where he gave a speech in which he lamented those “two very painful moments” in the history of Israel. More than 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage (168 of them returned alive).
“They were two failures connected by a threat. The lesson that we must all learn from both wars is that we must be occupied with the idea of a surprise attack. The Israeli forces must be prepared for it,” he lamented, according to information collected by the newspaper The Times of Israel.
“We are constantly working to assimilate these failures and prevent them from being repeated. This is my duty as head of the Army”
In this sense, he emphasized that “the roots of these failures are still being dealt with”, which is part of a “learning process”. “We are constantly working to assimilate these failures and prevent them from being repeated. This is my duty as head of the Army and that of all those who wear the uniform, whether regularly or while in the reserve,” he noted.
“A commander who does not question and who clings to his own beliefs will be defeated,” he also stated. “Reality constantly sends us signals; it is our duty to perceive them, listen to them and continually change. At the same time, we must not remain stuck in failure: we must look at it in the face, learn from it and move forward.”
Zamir said: “Our missions are multiplying and the size of the Army represents our strategic capacity in such a small country.” And he explained: “The creation of Division 38 and the establishment of new structures during this last year are necessary steps to strengthen the Army and reinforce the security of the State of Israel.”
This division, he claimed, has become an “operational division that, next year, will be consolidated as a new reserve division capable of operating in any scenario.” And he concluded: “To the reservists present: thank you. The entire State of Israel must thank you for the work you have carried out over the last three years with extraordinary sacrifice.”
Channel 12, in reality, is “spreading false information with the aim of overthrowing the right-wing government and bringing in a left-wing government that establishes a Palestinian state.”
On the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party insisted that the president was in no way aware that Palestinian militias were going to attack the country exactly three years ago today.
The prime minister “did not receive any prior warning before October 7 about a Hamas attack from the Gaza Strip or from Hamas, as testified by President Trump, President Biden’s advisor Brett McGurk, the Government of the United Arab Emirates, the Government of Egypt and others,” the party said in response to information broadcast by Channel 12 of Israeli television.
Likud has denounced that Channel 12 is, in fact, “spreading false information with the aim of overthrowing the right-wing government and bringing in a left-wing government that establishes a Palestinian state.”
In response, the party assures that Prime Minister Netanyahu was informed for the first time about the Hamas attack at 6:229 a.m. on October 7, already in the midst of the militias’ offensive, and if the president “had been informed in real time, everything would have been different.”
Netanyahu has not participated in any of the commemorative ceremonies marking the third anniversary this Wednesday, but he did so on Monday, on the official Hebrew date set by the Israeli Executive to remember the atrocity. This Wednesday’s ceremonies are organized mainly by relatives of the victims and survivors of the attack.
The prime minister did light a candle “in commemoration of each victim murdered on October 7 by the monsters of Hamas.” “The nation unites on this day in longing for our loved ones. We will complete the mission: we have settled accounts and we will continue to settle accounts with all the murderers,” his office concluded in a statement.
“Tonight, we stop to remember everything we have lost and also to ask ourselves what remains inside us since then and what it is that we long so deeply to rediscover.”
The largest popular ceremony for the anniversary was held in Tel Aviv, with an expected 50,000 attendees. The event, organized by the families of hostages and deceased, was presented by the former captive in Gaza Eli Sharabi and Israeli actress Shani Cohen.
“Tonight, we pause to remember all that we have lost and also to ask ourselves what remains within us since then and what it is that we long so deeply to rediscover,” Sharabi said at the beginning of the speech.
The Israeli Police arrested at least seven people in protests linked to the anniversary day, the Israeli newspaper reported. Haaretz. Four were protesting in the afternoon outside Netanyahu’s residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, two at his home in the city of Caesarea (northern Israel) and one of them in Tel Aviv.
The protesters criticize the fact that a state commission of inquiry into October 7 has not been established to independently study the distribution of responsibilities that allowed the massacre to occur.
Although security bodies such as the Army or the Shin Bet have carried out internal investigations, the Netanyahu Government has blocked the creation of the state body. “The Government wants to blur what happened. We are not going to allow it to happen,” say the protesters quoted by Haaretz.
