Israeli soldier reveals strange order to cancel border patrols on October 7th.

By dermot*no -News Desk, The Cradle - August 2, 2025

The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023:

Israeli soldier reveals strange order to cancel border patrols on October 7th.

An Israeli soldier stated that he and his fellow soldiers stationed at a military post near Gaza were ordered not to carry out their usual morning patrol at the border fence on October 7, 2023, Israeli media reported on July 17 of this year.

During the time the border patrol would normally have been conducted, members of Hamas' armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, crossed the fence to attack Israeli army bases and Israeli settlements.

Shalom Sheetrit, a soldier in the Golani Brigade, revealed the directive while testifying at a meeting of the lobby group for military reserve personnel, in the Israeli Knesset.

He stated that on the evening before the attack on October 7, he and two other soldiers, Yotam Sror and Itamar Ben Yehuda, were sitting by the battalion radio at the Pega military post near the Kibbutz called Be'eri.

“We were playing games on our cell phones [at 5:20 a.m.], and suddenly there was a strange message from my battalion commander,” the soldier explained, continuing, “and what he says on the call is something like this: ‘I don’t know why, but an order was given that there are no patrols at the fence until nine in the morning.’”

Sheetrit said soldiers from the military post conducted patrols along the border fence every morning “because we were in an operational battalion, and that is part of the job.”

Hamas fighters attacked the Pega military post, killing 14 Israeli soldiers there during Operation al-Aqsa Storm.

When Sheetrit was asked if this was the reason why many soldiers at the military post were still asleep when the Hamas attack began, he said: “I don’t know how to answer it that way. In our mortar unit, there was an alarm at dawn, and we woke up. It’s possible that those in the patrol units were told not to get up. I don’t know. I don’t want to just say that.”

Sheetrit stated that the military units based in the Pega military post were responsible for protecting Kibbutz Be'eri, which was also attacked by Hamas.

"Unfortunately, we were not able to do that. There were only dozens of Israeli soldiers against hundreds of Hamas terrorists, 25 against 150, and therefore, unfortunately, we could not complete our task. I am far from being a military officer who can give answers to questions, the situation hurts me just as it hurts everyone else," the soldier explained.

Major fighting took place at Be'eri where over 100 Israelis were killed.

After the Hamas attack began, the Israeli Air Force deployed Apache helicopters, tanks, and drones to bomb the kibbutz and the nearby Gaza border to prevent Hamas from taking prisoners back to Gaza.

As a result, Israeli military forces burned to death hundreds of Israeli civilians and Hamas fighters in airstrikes in Be'eri and other kibbutzim near the border, as well as at the Nova Music Festival, under a secretive policy known as the Hannibal Directive. Hamas was quickly blamed for the deaths.

"I tried to ask military personnel why and what happened there. The blood of my friends and the blood of many people in the country was shed in a huge tragedy, and I tried to understand why it happened and how," Sheetrit added.

The strange order to cancel routine patrols along the Gaza border, along with other evidence, helps to make clear that Israeli political and military leaders knew in advance about Hamas' plan to attack Israel on October 7th – and allowed it to happen, in order to justify the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the ethnic cleansing and construction of Jewish settlements on top of the ruins of the soon-to-be completely destroyed cities of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military and intelligence officials ignored numerous signals the night before the attack, and in the preceding weeks and months, indicating that Hamas was planning a major attack to take Israeli prisoners in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Female Israeli soldiers tasked with observing activity on the Gaza border gave several warnings to their superiors that an attack was imminent, but they were ignored.

"In hindsight, we could have done a lot, we could have listened to the observers, we could have brought in the air force, and these things didn't happen," Sheetrit concluded.

"That's the mistake. It's not a mistake from the fighters on the ground, but a mistake from the higher levels of the army, from people who went down to Eilat (for vacation & relaxation) even though we informed them a week in advance that there was intelligence information about an impending attack." The later DEFENSE caused around 80.000 Palestinians to be EXECUTED.

Retrieved from The Cradle, published July 31, 2025
Translated from English, links in the original article.
Original article: Israeli soldier reveals 'strange order' to cancel Gaza border patrols on 7 Oct