Yocheved Lifschitz, who was held captive in Gaza for more than two weeks before being released Monday evening, appeared to criticize Israel’s security failure that allowed Hamas gunmen to pour into Israel on October 7.
Speaking to journalists outside Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center on Tuesday, Lifschitz accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of not taking threats from Hamas “seriously.”
“I could not have known that we (could) get into this stage,” she said.
Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it has spent billions of dollars securing the border from attacks.
“It didn’t help,” Lifschitz said of the costly border fence that was breached on October 7.
“The lack of awareness by Shin Bet (the Israel Security Agency) and the IDF hurt us a lot,” she said. “They warned us three weeks beforehand, they burned fields, they sent fire balloons and the IDF did not treat it seriously,” she added, referring to Hamas.
Lifschitz explained how this culminated in the attack on her kibbutz of Nir Oz in southern Israel on October 7.
“All of a sudden on a Saturday morning, everything was very quiet. There was a hard pounding on the settlement,” she said.
Not long after, “hordes” of Hamas fighters broke through the kibbutz’s “expensive” fences and kept coming in their “droves” before placing Lifshitz on a motorbike and driving away, she said.
“It was very, very difficult and unpleasant,” a visibly upset Lifshitz added.
Speaking in the wake of the October 7 attack, IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus admitted “the entire system failed.”
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