IDF silence on Brig.-Gen. Avi Rosenfeld in probe of Camp Re’im battle is badge of shame - analysis

The IDF on Friday presented its probe into the October 7 battle of the Re’im Base.

Like the other individual October 7 battle probes, there are some useful lessons at a tactical level about errors that the military made prior to the invasion and on that day.

There is a sobering retelling of many high-ranking officers who were killed during the battle, and some heroic moments when some IDF forces held off dozens of well-trained Hamas invaders flooding in from multiple directions.

However, there are two large elements that have been missing from most probes, but are truly a badge of shame on this probe.

The most important facts about the Re’im base battle are that it was the site of the forward command for all of Gaza and that, unconscionably, it was overrun for over 10 hours from around 6:40 a.m. until sometime between 4:30 and 6:00 p.m., and the commander of the entire Gaza Division, Brig.-Gen. Avi Rosenfeld made a series of terrible decisions that made the results of the war that day multiple times worse than they might have been – though it was going to be a very tragic day no matter what.

If one commander was responsible for flagrantly poor command decisions that day, it was Rosenfeld.These points are vaguely hinted at but essentially absent from the report.

The IDF responded to an inquiry from The Jerusalem Post, noting that they had been addressed in other, bigger-picture system-wide reports presented in February.

However, in those reports, many IDF officials were listed as having failed, and there has never been a report which fully honed in on the significance of Rosenfeld’s failures, in particular, and the fall of the most important base responsible for Gaza.

So, what should this report have said about Rosenfeld?

FIRST, A short defense.

IDF officials were not informed about Hamas invasion warnings 

To the extent that IDF intelligence converted virtually all senior IDF officers into complacency regarding the potential threat of a Hamas ground invasion, Rosenfeld should be cut some slack.

But not too much.

On October 7, from 4:15 a.m. to 5:40 a.m., due to some suspicious signs from Hamas, Finkelman called back his brigade commanders at colonel rank but, based on a recommendation from Rosenfeld, did not call back battalions commanders at lieutenant colonel level.

Battalion commanders are the classic field commanders of a few hundred soldiers on the battlefield. With all of the complacency of IDF intelligence, Finkelman thought that maybe they should also call back the battalion commanders, but Rosenfeld convinced him not to.

More importantly, multiple IDF sources have said that even to this day, Rosenfeld would not admit that his forces were completely defeated by Hamas, and certainly that he would not admit that it occurred before 7:00 a.m. of October 7.

They said this is a crucial point because, even when the IDF at different military levels between 6:45 a.m. and 7:15 a.m. started to declare that a full war was underway, they were still looking to Rosenfeld for updates on the situation as the senior forward commander in the area.

While the IDF high command, led by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, IDF Operations Command Chief Oded Basiuk, and IDF Operations Brigade Chief Brig.-Gen. Shlomi Binder did eventually try to take some independent actions to learn what was going on in the South, but they mostly relied on Rosenfeld.

Similarly, while Finkelman took a variety of independent decisions and actions to learn what was transpiring in the South, he also heavily relied on Rosenfeld.

It did not even occur to any of the officials above Rosenfeld that there could be a scenario where his headquarters was completely overtaken, and he had zero situational awareness, and this was true even after they started to learn that there were many Hamas penetrations simultaneously, and not just the two or so which the military had trained for.

None of his superiors could imagine a situation where Rosenfeld was completely defeated so quickly, and Rosenfeld himself did not even acknowledge how bad his situation was until he called Air Force Brig.-Gen. Omer Tishler at 9:47 a.m., begging for help to defray the attacks on his positions.

This meant that Finkleman and the air force did not decide to blanket the Israel-Gaza border with aerial fire until around 10:05 a.m. (according to the air force) or 10:20 a.m. (according to IDF southern command) and carrying out this “Hannibal Directive” did not start until around 10:30 a.m.

EVEN THEN, Rosenfeld never used the words “defeated” or “overwhelmed” about his division. Had he done so, multiple IDF sources say they would have acted with even more urgency than they did.

Rosenfeld did announce “parash pleshet,” a code word for multiple penetrations from Gaza, at 6:37 a.m., but none of his superiors had any concept of the size of the invasion or that he could not be counted on to provide them updates and to direct the response.

Because of Rosenfeld’s denial, IDF sources said they did not fully realize that his division had utterly collapsed (they knew it was being hit hard) until around noon.

On top of all of this, Rosenfeld fled into his command center and sent a number of his senior and mid-level commanders to their death defending the camp rather than standing by their side to organize a truly coordinated defense of the base.

This goes against the principle that if an IDF position is under attack, the senior commander there is expected to lead his troops into battle.

Typically, brigadier-generals do not do this because they are back at command bases and spend less time in the field.But since Rosenfeld allowed his base to be overrun, he did not really have that excuse either.

Rosenfeld resigned from the IDF in the summer of 2024, one of the first higher-level officers to do so, but even that was several months after his colossal October 7 failure.

Fifteen years of IDF chiefs, Shin Bet chiefs, prime ministers, and governments led to the October 7 failure, and not any single person can be blamed. But an inability to name some names within the IDF who distinctly failed on that day does a disservice to those who acted and fought heroically and handicaps Israel’s efforts to prepare in a fully honest way for the future.