An IDF soldier just exposed that Israel deliberately let October 7 happen

 

An IDF soldier just exposed that Israel deliberately let October 7 happen

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 by Hannah Sharland

 

 8 August 2025

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Damning new testimony from an IDF soldier stationed at the Gaza border on 7 October has backed up growing evidence that Israel deliberately allowed the Al Aqsa Flood operation to happen.

The soldier’s statement has turned the mirror on Israel’s cynical propaganda once again. While the genocidal occupier and war criminal has made repeated accusations over Hamas’s ‘human shield’ strategy, instead, it’s Israel that has used its own soldiers and civilians as fodder for fueling its violent colonial aspirations in Palestine.

Unsurprisingly, none of the mainstream media have yet picked up on this. Of course, it’s in keeping with their 22 month complicity in downplaying Israel’s genocide and atrocities in Gaza.

IDF soldier testimony suggests Israel let 7 October happen

Shalom Shitrit – an IDF soldier who was on duty on 7 October – has made a damning testimony to the Knesset. He testified that high-level IDF officials issued a “strange message” the morning of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation:

According to The Dissident, Shitrit said during his testimony that at 5.20am on 7 October:

We were playing on the phone and suddenly a strange message came up from my deputy commander, .. and what he says on the radio is something like this: ‘I don’t know why, but an order was given that there would be no patrols in the (Gaza) fence until 9am

And sure enough, an hour later, at 6.30am, suddenly sirens.

He went on to explain how:

Every morning the platoon raises alert, and in his estimation, there are no mornings in which there are no patrols on the fence because you are in an operational battalion and that is part of the matter.

So, according to Shitrit’s testimony, someone from a place of high command decided border IDF soldiers would not patrol the morning of 7 October. Shitrit indicated how unprecedented this was. It obviously raises huge questions – namely, did it know of the impending Hamas operation – and opportunistically choose to enable it?

Israel had the intel, but ignored it

Of course, this testimony from an on-duty IDF soldier sits next to a wealth of documented evidence Israel knew of the attack well ahead of time. Reporting on this, US independent outlet The Young Turks pointed to a number of these. One was a New York Times article from November 2023 detailing how Israeli officials had:

obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened

It also highlighted an article by Israeli news site Haaretz from June 2024 which buttressed this further. It confirmed that the Israeli intelligence had “detailed knowledge of Hamas’s plan”. The same outlet has underscored IDF command ignoring intel from women soldiers patrolling at the border, warning of an impending attack.

Moreover, Israel deliberately deploying its Hannibal Directive makes the soldier’s testimony all the more believable as well. This Israeli military policy prefers the murder of its own soldiers, over them becoming hostages. Numerous Israeli press reports and revelations from Israeli military officials revealed a “mass Hannibal” order that directed the slaughter of civilians Hamas took captive.

As the Canary’s Ed Sykes previously reported:

Released hostages, meanwhile, have described how “the main threat to their lives while they were held in Gaza was not Hamas, but Israeli attacks”. One, for example, described how “Hamas guards put mattresses over us on the floor to cover us, and then they covered us with their bodies to protect us from our own forces’ shooting”. Another stated, “We were sitting in tunnels and we were very afraid that, not Hamas, but Israel would kill us”. Another, meanwhile, insisted they “were shot at by a helicopter when we were on our way to Gaza”.

Israel’s then defense minister Yoav Gallant later admitted that the government implemented the Hannibal Directive on 7 October.

In other words, Israel was fully prepared to murder its own citizens. Next to documents and accounts of its prior knowledge of Hamas’s plans, it wouldn’t be off-brand that the Israeli government let 7 October happen. After all, nearly two years into a genocide in which it has massacred at least 61,000 people – but likely hundreds of thousands more – it’s still playing victim. And that is likely the whole point.

Pretext for annexing Gaza

This is all amid Israeli government ministers’ myriad expressions of annexation and ethnic cleansing intent. It lays bare how Israel has used the insurgency as an expedient pretext for its genocide in Gaza.

The Young Turks highlighted one such incriminating instance. Referring to a piece Drop Site News published in July 2024, it drew attention to the fact Netanyahu has made no secret of Israel’s colonial ambition prior to 7 October. As the Drop Site News report detailed:

Just two weeks before the October 7 attacks, the Israeli leader delivered a speech at the UN general assembly in New York, brandishing a map of what he promised could be the “New Middle East.” It depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza and the West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased.

Of course, Israel has been committing illegal annexations in the West Bank for years with full impunity. The writing has long been on the wall over its ambition for the complete expulsion of Palestinians from their lands.

In February 2024, Law for Palestine submitted over 500 instances of Israeli incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing to the ICJ. That was just since its siege on Gaza began in October – a little over four months. Politicians, military personnel, and media talking heads in Israel have only continued expressing such vile, criminal intent since. The Accountability Archive has collated more than 80,000 examples of public figures making their support for the genocide known.

Now, it’s impossible to deny this is Israel’s objective.

Israel is massacring and starving the population of Gaza to death in full view of the world. Its government has left little room to doubt that total occupation of Palestine is its explicit intention. In July, Israel’s Knesset passed a symbolic motion calling for the total annexation of the West Bank. And now, Netanyahu’s security cabinet has approved plans to occupy Gaza City, with intent to occupy the entire Strip.

Propaganda and colonial ambition: read between the lines of an IDF soldier and his testimony

With a full livestreamed reel of its war criminal atrocities, Israel has grasped at outrageous straws to smear and spin the mounting evidence of its ethnic cleansing. After international press photos revealed the horribly emaciated bodies of children, Israel engaged in grotesque famine denial.

Using the same playbook, it’s peddling in depraved dismissal of aerial footage UK corporate media outlets have captured. These depict apocalyptic scenes of buildings flattened to their foundations, and city turned to rubble. Predictably, Netanyahu has been blaming Hamas, making wild claims Hamas has booby-trapped buildings. The systematic destruction – 22 months of relentless Israeli bombardment the scale of seven Hiroshima bombs – has nothing to do with it, clearly.

So, it’s not hard to imagine that Netanyahu’s far-right government did indeed let 7 October happen intentionally.

With a violent government steeped to its neck in propaganda and colonial ambition, it was the opportune impetus to launch its genocide. Its mission to free the hostages has always been a cover for this. Pounding the Gaza Strip with 2000lb bombs and blocking food, water, and medical supplies has endangered their lives. Yet, the Israeli government seems to have zero qualms about doing so.

Ultimately, it has never really added up how a highly technologically equipped, militarised, and surveilled Gaza border could be breached. This is a settler state that shoots and kills Palestinians staging peaceful protests near the Gaza fence. Now, the testimony of an IDF soldier only points further to the fact Israel made no mistake on 7 October. It laid the foundation for its annexation – long its war criminal goal that it’s now making a brutal reality.

Featured image via screengrab

https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/08/08/idf-soldier-knesset-testimony/

 

Soldier Unveils Hidden Commands Leading to Gaza Invasion

01 August 2025 - 23:21

TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- An Israeli soldier stationed near the Gaza fence has testified that he and fellow troops were ordered not to carry out their routine early morning patrol on October 7, 2023, the day Hamas launched a large-scale assault on Israeli military outposts and nearby settlements, according to new Israeli media reports cited by The Cradle.

Shalom Sheetrit, a soldier in the Golani Brigade, revealed the unusual directive during a session held by the reserve personnel lobby in the Israeli Knesset. The order effectively canceled the usual patrol along the fence until 9 a.m., a critical window during which Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, crossed into Israeli occupied territory and launched deadly attacks on army bases and kibbutzim.

“We were playing on the phone at 5:20 a.m. when suddenly a strange message came from my battalion commander,” Sheetrit said. “He said something like, ‘I don’t know why, but an order was issued that there are no patrols at the fence until nine in the morning.’” He added that such patrols were routine for his battalion, integral to border security.

The Pega outpost, where Sheetrit and his unit were based, was heavily targeted in the assault known as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Hamas fighters reportedly killed 14 Israeli soldiers there. The outpost was responsible for guarding Kibbutz Be’eri, which also suffered an attack resulting in the deaths of over 100 Zionists.

Asked whether the canceled patrols explained why many soldiers were still asleep when the attack began, Sheetrit said he was uncertain. “In our mortar department, there was an alert at dawn, and we woke up. It’s possible that in the patrol departments, they were told not to wake up. I don’t know,” he explained.
Following the initial Hamas incursion, the Israeli military launched

 heavy airstrikes targeting Be’eri and other border kibbutzim. The strikes, which included helicopters, tanks, and drones, were reportedly intended to prevent Hamas from retreating into Gaza with captives. However, according to testimonies and reports, hundreds of Zionists and Hamas fighters were killed in these strikes, including during the controversial attack at the Nova Music Festival, carried out under the secretive “Hannibal Directive.”

The rapid attribution of all casualties to Hamas, without acknowledgment of the consequences of Israeli military actions, highlights a broader pattern of obfuscation.

Sheetrit expressed deep pain over the tragedy, saying, “Unfortunately, we were not up to the task. There were dozens against hundreds of terrorists, 25 against 150, and so we couldn’t arrive, unfortunately.”

Crucially, the revelation of a standing order to cancel routine patrols feeds into growing evidence that Israeli political and military leadership were aware in advance of the impending Hamas attack yet chose to ignore warnings. This apparent negligence allowed the operation to proceed unimpeded, serving as a pretext for harsh Israeli military onslaught on Gaza.

Multiple intelligence signals were reportedly dismissed in the days and weeks leading to October 7. Female Israeli soldiers tasked with surveillance along the Gaza fence issued warnings of an imminent attack, yet these were allegedly ignored by higher command.

“In hindsight, we could have done a lot of things; we could have listened to the observers, we could have brought up the air force, and these things didn’t happen,” Sheetrit said. He criticized senior military officials for ignoring intelligence alerts and for leadership failures that contributed to the disastrous outcome.


Further criticism is leveled at Israeli authorities for downplaying the scale of intelligence failures and the systemic issues within the military chain of command. The incident exemplifies broader Israeli strategic objectives, which include justifying aggressive campaigns in Gaza, the destruction of Palestinian urban centers, and advancing settlement expansion on occupied land.

Analysts view these revelations as confirmation that Israel’s military leadership deliberately allowed the Hamas attack to unfold, creating a pretext for further aggression against Gaza and intensifying the ongoing displacement and suffering of the Palestinian people. This episode reaffirms the urgency of international efforts to hold Israel accountable for its actions and to support the rights of Palestinians under occupation.

https://kayhan.ir/en/news/142078/soldier-unveils-hidden-commands-leading-to-gaza-invasion

 

FACT SHEET: Who Are the Jews of Iran, and How Do They View the War?

March 6, 2026 Articles, Features

Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament, speaking at a pro-Palestine event. (Photo Illustration: Palestine Chronicle)

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By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

A statement by Iran’s Jewish lawmaker highlights how Iranian Jewish identity challenges Israel’s claim to represent Jews worldwide.

Who Are the Jews of Iran?

A statement by Iran’s Jewish lawmaker following the reported Israeli assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has drawn renewed attention to one of the Middle East’s least discussed communities: the Jews of Iran.

Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament (Majlis), reportedly expressed condolences and described the assassination as a tragedy affecting the Iranian nation as a whole. The statement reflected a position often articulated by Iranian Jewish leaders—that their identity is tied primarily to Iran, not to Israel.

In the context of the Israeli-US war on Iran, such responses underscore a reality frequently overlooked in political discourse: Jewish communities around the world do not necessarily share a single political identity.

The existence and continued presence of the Iranian Jewish community complicate the narrative—often promoted by Israeli officials—that Israel speaks on behalf of Jews everywhere.

To understand why, it is necessary to look more closely at the history, status, and identity of Iran’s Jews.

How Ancient Is the Jewish Presence in Iran?

The Jewish presence in Iran is among the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world, with roots that historians trace back more than two millennia.

Over the centuries, Jewish communities developed in various parts of the Iranian plateau, including cities such as Hamadan, Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tehran. These communities participated in trade, scholarship, and local cultural life across different Persian dynasties and empires.

Persian Jewish history is intertwined with the broader history of the region. Jewish communities lived under the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian empires, as well as under later Islamic dynasties that ruled the region.

The deep historical roots of Jews in Iran mean that the community is often described not simply as a diaspora population but as an indigenous part of Iran’s historical and cultural landscape.

Even as political systems changed, Jewish communities remained embedded in local societies, developing Persian-Jewish cultural traditions and religious institutions that endured for centuries.

How Many Jews Live in Iran Today?

Today, Iran’s Jewish population is relatively small but remains one of the largest in the Middle East outside Israel.

Most estimates place the number of Jews living in Iran at between 8,000 and 10,000 people. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, however, the community was far larger, with estimates ranging from 80,000 to 100,000 Jews living in the country.

Political upheaval, economic changes, and regional tensions prompted many Iranian Jews to emigrate in the late twentieth century, particularly to the United States.

Despite this decline, a functioning Jewish communal life continues to exist in Iran.

Most members of the community live in Tehran, which hosts the largest concentration of Iranian Jews. Smaller communities remain in Shiraz and Isfahan, cities with long Jewish histories.

Synagogues, Jewish schools, and community organizations continue to operate, and Jewish religious practices are still observed publicly within the framework permitted by Iranian law.

What Is the Legal Status of Jews in Iran?

Judaism is formally recognized in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Alongside Christianity and Zoroastrianism, Judaism is listed as one of the country’s official religious minorities, meaning that Jewish citizens have legal recognition and limited protections under Iranian law.

One of the most notable provisions is the reserved seat in Iran’s parliament (Majlis) allocated to the Jewish community.

This seat is currently held by Homayoun Sameh, who represents Iranian Jews in the national legislature.

Jewish religious institutions—including synagogues and community centers—operate in several Iranian cities, and Jewish schools continue to function, although they must follow the national education system and curriculum.

Like other religious minorities in Iran, Jews face certain restrictions, including limitations on holding some senior government or military positions. Nevertheless, the constitutional recognition of Judaism reflects an official distinction made by the Iranian state between Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political ideology.

Do Iranian Jews Identify with Israel?

The relationship between Iranian Jews and Israel is complex and often misunderstood outside the region.

Israel frequently portrays itself as the political representative of Jews worldwide. Yet many Jewish communities across the globe maintain identities shaped primarily by national, cultural, or historical ties to their own societies.

Iranian Jews historically developed a strong sense of belonging to Iran itself.

Community leaders have often emphasized that Judaism is a religion while Zionism is a political movement, and that the two should not be conflated.

This distinction is frequently highlighted in public statements by Iranian Jewish representatives and religious leaders, particularly during periods of heightened tension between Iran and Israel.

For many Iranian Jews, their identity is rooted not only in religious tradition but also in the Persian language, culture, and national history.

How Did the Community React to the Assassination of Khamenei?

Following the Israeli assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, statements attributed to representatives of Iran’s Jewish community expressed condolences and solidarity with the Iranian nation.

The reaction reflects a pattern that has appeared in several previous political crises in Iran: Jewish leaders publicly emphasizing their belonging to the country and their participation in national mourning or political discourse.

Such responses highlight the extent to which the Iranian Jewish community sees itself as part of the broader Iranian society rather than as an extension of Israel.

For observers outside Iran, these reactions can appear surprising. Yet within the context of Iranian Jewish history, expressions of national solidarity are consistent with the community’s long-standing self-identification as Iranian.

What Does the Iranian Jewish Experience Reveal?

The existence of a Jewish community in Iran complicates a simplified narrative often presented in international politics—that Israel speaks for Jews everywhere.

Jewish communities around the world are diverse in their political views, historical experiences, and national identities.

The Iranian case demonstrates how Jewish identity can coexist with strong local and national affiliations outside Israel.

For more than two millennia, Jews in Iran have lived within Persian society, adapting to changing political systems while preserving religious and cultural traditions.

Today, despite geopolitical tensions between Tehran and Tel Aviv, that ancient community continues to exist.

Its history underscores a broader reality: Jewish identity has never been monolithic, and communities across the world have developed their own relationships with the countries they call home.

For the Jews of Iran, that home has long been Iran itself.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/fact-sheet-who-are-the-jews-of-iran/