The Israel Defense Forces abandoned a group of civilians sheltering on Zikim Beach amid the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre, according to an internal military investigation made public on Sunday.
The Golani Brigade's 51st "First in the Breach" Battalion withdrew from the beach south of Ashkelon as Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Jewish state with speedboats, after which the terrorists murdered 17 civilians in the vicinity.
The investigation also found that seven bodies were left inside a bomb shelter for a week before they were recovered by Israeli rescue workers.
The military "failed in its mission to protect" civilians at Zikim Beach, it said, adding that this was "expressed in the fact that the terrorists were able to infiltrate our territory in a short time and murder 17 civilians.
"The soldiers did not risk their lives and did not strive to engage in close combat with the enemy," according to the probe.
The probe stated that the failure stemmed from a lack of preparedness alongside difficulties in putting together an accurate picture of the attacks due to the total collapse of the military's Gaza Division during the invasion.
There was no proper communication between the Gaza Division and the Israeli Navy until around 10 p.m. on October 8, some 40 hours after Hamas launched its cross-border assault, the IDF concluded.
The Israeli civilians killed on the beach were John Aslanov, 70; Yulia Chaban, 24; Benny Genish, 70; Avi Hasday, 53; Tal Keren, 17; Danil Kimenfeld, 64; Shahaf Krief, 17; Svetlana Lisovoy, 61; Yuri Lisovoy, 63; Robert Shaulov, 70; Or Taasa, 17; Nadav Tayeb, 17; Arye Uzan, 68; Eli Uzan, 42; Alina Vaisberg, 17; Vladimir Zhukov, 63; and Abed Ziyadne, 26.
Following the murders on the beach, the terrorists tried to infiltrate nearby Kibbutz Zikim, whose civilian defense team fought back, preventing a massacre in the community of more than 1,000.
The probe noted that while some of the Golani Brigade troops involved in the Zikim Beach withdrawal later fought in the IDF's ground offensive in Gaza, all but one—who currently serves in a noncombat role—have since been released from military service.
A wider IDF probe into the failures leading up to and during the Hamas-led October 7 attack was published in February.
"The State of Israel chose a policy of 'conflict management' vis-à-vis Hamas, whose purpose is to preserve and improve the existing reality, and from which the military methods of operation were derived," the IDF said in the probes, which were geared to draw operational lessons and not take aim at decisions made by the political leadership.
"It is wrong to 'manage' a conflict with an enemy whose goal is your destruction," the top-level military investigations stated on Feb. 27, concluding that Hamas terrorists "took advantage of Israel's policy of 'conflict management' to advance an orderly plan for a broad attack."
During the October 7 onslaught, Hamas-led terrorists and unaffiliated Palestinian "civilians" not only murdered 1,200 but wounded thousands more and abducted 251 back to Gaza, 59 of whom remain in captivity 577 days later.
