Leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz has obtained an investigation from the apartheid state’s occupation forces (IDF), revealing that a “top IDF commander” visited the site of the Nova rave just an hour before the Hamas-led attack on IDF positions on 7 October 2023. And what’s particularly mind blowing is that (despite the commander receiving intelligence that Hamas was planning an assault, and despite him noting the severe lack of security at the rave) he allowed it to go ahead with no changes.

Exposed

As Haaretz reported on 2 September:

Lieutenant Colonel Haim Cohen, commander of the Northern Brigade in the Gaza Division, observed the massive crowds at the festival and noted that only a handful of police officers were on security duty

There were over 4,000 attendees at the Nova rave, and the IDF investigation noted that there were only 50 police officers there for security. However, Cohen chose not to assign extra security or mention the event amid “escalating alerts”, in spite of “the size of the crowd, the timing and the sensitive location”. The investigation said this was simply a ‘miscalculation’. Cohen was later relieved of his duties.

Previous reports also noted the occupying power’s “complete failure” to prevent the 7 October attack, despite knowing it was coming. Indeed, many believe that prime minister and wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, who was facing corruption charges and holding together a fragile coalition at the time, very much “needed to start a war” to keep his own power.

Most people had no idea the Nova rave was happening

Haaretz adds that Cohen had approved the rave earlier in the week, but that most IDF forces in the area “were unaware it was taking place and therefore lacked knowledge of its location, size and security arrangements”. The rave’s organisers themselves had not announced the location of the event before 6 October.

As an Electronic Intifada (EI) report revealed previously, Hamas intelligence was apparently unaware it was taking place “less than three miles from the Re’im military base” – “the headquarters of the Israeli army’s Gaza Division – the number one target” of the attack. Nova was not a target, and even “Israeli intelligence has concluded that the Palestinians had no prior knowledge of the rave”. Upon breaking out of what human-rights experts had long called an ‘open-air prison‘, Hamas fighters had always planned to attack the Israeli occupation forces, and “had been told not to target civilians during the assault”.

As Haaretz said, the Nova rave “became the deadliest site of the October 7 attacks”, and the focus of much Israeli propaganda seeking to justify the subsequent genocide in Gaza. 378 people at the event lost their lives, and Hamas-led fighters took 44 more as hostages.

EI‘s Asa Winstanley calculated that the 7 October 2023 attack resulted in “a maximum of 780 dead Israeli civilians”, though we can’t know without an independent investigation how many the IDF killed and how many Palestinian fighters killed. It seems likely, however, that “Israel killed hundreds of its own people between 7 and 9 October 2023”, namely under the Hannibal Directive, which preferred the murder of Israeli soldiers over allowing them to become hostages. Former Israeli defence minister and wanted war criminal Yoav Gallant himself confirmed in early 2025 that the directive had become active on 7 October.

Israeli state disinterest

Israeli occupation forces’ subsequent genocide in Gaza has killed “at least 63,633 people, including at least 18,430 children“, though many consider this to be a significant underestimation.

The new Haaretz report, meanwhile, is the latest suggestion that the size of the death toll from the 7 October 2023 breakout attack seems to be just as much about the Israeli state’s disinterest in its own civilians (or desire for an excuse to attack Gaza) as it is about the actions of Hamas-led fighters.

Featured image via the Canary