Member-only story
Yesterday, the WSJ brought us a riveting article on the start of the October 7th war, just 3 days shy of the first anniversary of the Palestinian invasion.
The article was still up this morning in the front page of the digital edition.
Here are the features highlighted:
In the Nahal Oz base, just half a mile from Gaza, 22 Israeli women soldiers had been doing duty as unarmed observers. Their sole task was to monitor the border activities of Palestinians.
And they did so by watching videos around the clock, taking turns and reporting immediately to their higher ups what evidence they found.
The WSJ article tells us that the women had been consistently — for weeks and months — expressing alarm to what they noticed as unmistakable signs of an impending Palestinian attack.
But they were not heard.
And if they were, they were ignored.
The women’s worst fears became the ugly reality when at 6:30 am on October 7th, missiles from Gaza started to rain upon them.
The women had not been trained for the eventuality of an invasion.
The Nahal Oz base is only 50 miles south of Tel Aviv, and yet it wasn’t until 4 pm that day that help started to arrive.
By then 15 women had been killed and 7 been taken back to Gaza as hostages.
Of the 7, one has been rescued, one confirmed dead and the remaining 5 are presumed still held as prisoners.
Two things stand out. One the atrocious disregard for the reports the women had been sending…
