Category: Audio Posts: Selected Articles

The armed rallygoer accused of plotting a possible third assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump is a self-described MAGA supporter and registered Republican who once tried, but failed, to launch a political career in Nevada.

Details about Vem Miller’s background are emerging after the 49-year-old was taken into custody on weapons charges after he was stopped at a security checkpoint at Trump’s Coachella Valley rally Saturday.

Local authorities say they believe they thwarted yet another assassination attempt against the Republican presidential nominee after Miller was allegedly busted with loaded firearms, multiple passports and a fake license plate.

But Miller, who has since been released on $5,000 bail, slammed the accusations as “bulls–t.”

Here’s what we know so far about Miller in the wake of his arrest:

What is his political affiliation?

Miller, who is a Las Vegas resident, is a registered Republican — and proudly calls himself a supporter “all in” on Trump.

“Yes, I’m 100% a Trump supporter,” he told Fox News Digital as he rebutted the claim from authorities that he planned to kill the 45th president.

“This is a man that I deeply admire.”

After his arrest this weekend, local cops accused Miller of being part of a so-called sovereign citizens movement — a far-right collective built on conspiracy theories that say governments have no authority over them.

Miller denied that in interviews, even telling Fox News he doesn’t “think there’s such a thing.”

“Government is an inanimate object, it’s the individuals within government that matter, so no, I’m not a part of any of that,” Miller said.

“They’re saying that I’m part of these right-wing anti-government groups? Why aren’t they naming these groups? Because it doesn’t exist.”

What is his background?

Miller is a film and TV industry professional who has long railed against the US government and mainstream media, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“For 20 years +, I have been working in the media as an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and a content producer … I have seen our rights be taken, while the power of big government grows,” his bio on the work-focused site states.

“I have seen small businesses and the middle class be squashed. I have seen unlawful mandates and politicians acting like dictators. I have also seen how the power of the money flows through politics and a political class that no longer works for We The People.”

In 2022, he created the American Happens Network — with the motto “Rage against the mainstream media” — which plays host to his politically aligned podcast called “Blood Money.”

The podcast focuses on “corruption, controversy and conspiracy — topics the Mainstream media will not touch,” according to its website.

Miller also holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in English and creative writing, his LinkedIn shows.

His failed political bid

Miller ran as a GOP candidate for state assembly in Nevada in 2022 — but ultimately lost the primary.

At the time, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he was running for office because “this country has been taken over by tyranny.”

He had vowed to focus on alleged voter fraud and would work on strengthening voter ID laws and reimplementing paper ballots.

He also told the outlet that he supported increased electric car manufacturing in his state, as well as solar energy.

What happened at the Trump rally?

Miller was stopped by sheriff’s deputies at a security checkpoint outside the rally around 5 p.m. local time Saturday, authorities said.

He had allegedly tried to enter the rally with a phony press pass.

Cops searched his black SUV after realizing the vehicle was unregistered and discovered a cache of fake passports and driver’s licenses, along with a shotgun, a loaded handgun and a high-capacity magazine, officials said.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said in the aftermath that he “truly” believed his department halted an assassination attempt, though he acknowledged it was “speculation.”

“What his frame of mind was, all we can do is speculate,” Bianco said. “If you’re asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt.”

Neither the Secret Service nor the FBI has said the incident was a planned assassination attempt.

What was he charged with?

Miller was hit with charges of possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine, both misdemeanors.

He was subsequently released on $5,000 bail. 

No federal charges have been filed.

What has the suspect said about the allegations?

A “shocked” Miller quickly slammed his arrest, as well as the sheriff’s claim he was plotting to assassinate Trump, as “bulls–t.”

“These accusations are complete bulls–t,” Miller told the Southern California News Group. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

Miller, who insisted he was unaware of the different gun laws between Nevada and California, said he was invited to the rally by the head of the Clark County GOP — and was wearing a Trump shirt and hat when he ran into authorities at the checkpoint.

He claimed in an interview with Fox News that he brought in the weapons for personal protection because of death threats he’s received since launching his America Happens Network.

“I always travel around with my firearms in the back of my truck,” he told the outlet, adding that he has “never” shot a gun in his life.

Miller also denied the sheriff’s claim he had a stash of fake passports on him.

“None of those are fake,” he said, adding that he is Armenian and has documents that show his full Armenian name and ones that don’t.

For decades, we have heard about and often ignored “the Silent Majority.” Time and again, Republican leaders have predicted that this seemingly mythical phenomenon was going to come to the fore and save the country from destructive Democratic policies.

At least in terms of the popular vote, that mythical creature has mostly remained in stealth mode, as the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Of course, our presidents are elected via the Electoral College, so the popular vote is not the final say. For the most part, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote by crushing it in major cities and along the East and West coasts. Map-wise, most of the United States is still red.

For this election, I believe a new phenomenon is going to drive the vote for the Republicans and most especially for former President Donald Trump: the “scared majority” vote, which will actually show up at the polls.

I grew up in abject poverty as a child, and most of my contacts to this day are those in the working class or lower. While the entrenched elites from politics, academia, the C-suites, Hollywood and the media who live in bubbles of luxury and protection won’t notice, those Americans have never been more scared in their lives. Not only about their future, but about their present.

Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control. Circumstances they believe were deliberately and politically exacerbated by the Democrats and most especially by the Biden-Harris administration.

There is something going on. These times do not feel like the others for the working class. They feel much more foreboding.

There are now so many “canaries in the coal mine” on this issue that they need to take a number to chirp out the first warning.

The first is that the Democratic Party used to be the party of the poor and disenfranchised. Now it is the party of uber-wealthy tech and big-pharma barons and power-hungry special interests.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted last week: “Paycheck-to-paycheck voters were once the rank and file of the Democratic Party. Now they are abandoning it, and with good reason.” We also have this recent headline from Newsweek: “I Raised Millions for Democrats. At the DNC, I Realized They’re the Party of the Rich.”

“Here’s the sad truth,” the author correctly states in the piece. “The Democratic Party has lost its way entirely. They mostly speak to the college educated, the urban and affluent, in their language. Their tone is condescending and paternalistic. They peddle giveaways to the college-educated like student loan forgiveness plans that disproportionately help their base, snubbing the majority of the country without a four-year degree, and then offer no tangible plans for true reform.”

Well, guess what? The “majority of the country” is not stupid. In fact, to survive as a working-class and disenfranchised voter, you actually have to be quite smart. Tens of millions of these Americans not only do understand the political games being played but realize that it is they who are paying the highest price.

The next “canary in the coal mine” is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters non-endorsement endorsement of Donald Trump. For the first time in over 20 years, the Teamsters did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Instead, their leadership chose to endorse no one.

Why? Because that leadership was shocked to find that almost 60 percent of its rank-and-file membership — those would be fearful working-class Americans — have indicated they are going to vote for Trump over Harris. What is noteworthy here is that when Biden was still in the race, Trump was actually trailing him, 44 percent to 36 percent. As with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the more Americans see of Harris, the less they like her or trust her.

That goes double when they realize that Harris refuses to do real interviews or hold an unscripted press conference. Those I speak with also raise the fear that she is hiding something while being controlled by others.

Next, we come to the “canary” reported by CBS News. Correspondent Adriana Diaz admitted that, while in swing-state Nevada, she could only find “one person” in each restaurant she visited who planned to vote for Harris, while the rest were “really excited” about Trump. This, she said, after “leaving no stone unturned” to find any Harris supporters.

These times are different. The fear is building. During that segment, voters expressed a fear of the failing economy, fear of crime, fear of out-of-control illegal immigration and fear of a world on fire. “Fear” is the dominant emotion.

Speaking of immigration, we have this bit of insulting double-speak from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell blaming the massive influx of illegal immigrants for the rising unemployment rate. Said Powell: “If you’re having millions of people come into the labor force, then — and you’re creating 100,000 jobs — you’re going to see unemployment go up.”

I’ve got news for Chairman Powell: The tens of millions of “scared” voters are more than smart enough to realize those “millions of people” coming into the labor force did not let themselves into our nation. These working-class American citizens know those illegal immigrants were released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Fear is real. Fear does motivate. Working-class Americans do fear that elite-enabling liberal policies beyond their control are robbing them of their quality of life now and well into their futures.

But many of these Americans have also realized that there is one way to combat that fear and regain some of that control by voting.

I predict that there is a reckoning coming in November from those tens of millions of scared voters. And I suspect that reckoning is going to produce a landslide victory for Trump.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.

The 15th-century explorer Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, Spanish scientists said on Saturday, after using DNA analysis to tackle a centuries-old mystery.

Several countries have argued over the origins and the final burial place of the divisive figure who led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas.

Many historians have questioned the traditional theory that Columbus came from Genoa, Italy. Other theories range from him being a Spanish Jew or a Greek, to Basque, Portuguese or British.

To solve the mystery researchers conducted a 22-year investigation, led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente, by testing tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, long marked by authorities there as the last resting place of Columbus, though there had been rival claims.

They compared them with those of known relatives and descendants and their findings were announced in a documentary titled “Columbus DNA: The true origin” on Spain’s national broadcaster TVE on Saturday.

“We have DNA from Christopher Columbus, very partial, but sufficient. We have DNA from Hernando Colón, his son,” Lorente said in the programme.

“And both in the Y chromosome (male) and in the mitochondrial DNA (transmitted by the mother) of Hernando there are traits compatible with Jewish origin.”

Around 300,000 Jews lived in Spain before the ‘Reyes Catolicos’, Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand, ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country. Many settled around the world. The word Sephardic comes from Sefarad, or Spain in Hebrew.

After analysing 25 possible places, Lorente said it was only possible to say Columbus was born in Western Europe.

On Thursday, Lorente said they had confirmed previous theories that the remains in Seville Cathedral belonged to Columbus.

Research on Columbus’ nationality was complicated by a number of factors including the large amount of data. But “the outcome is almost absolutely reliable,” Lorente said.

Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, in 1506, but wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola that is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. His remains were taken there in 1542, then moved to Cuba in 1795 and then, it had been long thought in Spain, to Seville in 1898.

Iran has denied reports about “secret documents” allegedly created by Hamas and later obtained by Israel linking the Islamic Republic to Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel last October.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials. Almost 100 hostages remain in captivity, less than 70 of whom are believed to be alive. Israel subsequently launched its military operation in Gaza, which has killed roughly 42,000 Palestinians so far, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry based in the Hamas-led territory. Local health officials don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants but say many of those killed were women and children.

Just after the first anniversary of the Palestinian militant attack, The New York Times, in an article titled “Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack,” revealed on Saturday what was said to be in the minutes of several secret meetings Hamas held in the lead-up to October 7 and later obtained by the Israeli military. The documents were said to show efforts by Hamas to persuade its allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join in the attack.

Iran provides funding, weapons and training to Hamas and Hezbollah, according to a 2021 terrorism report by the U.S. Department of State.

In response, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations told Newsweek on Saturday: “While Doha-stationed Hamas officials have themselves stated that they, too, had no prior knowledge of the operation and that all the planning, decision-making, and directing were solely executed by Hamas’s military wing based in Gaza, any claim attempting to link it to Iran or Hezbollah—either partially or wholly—is devoid of credence and comes from fabricated documents.”

Later that same day, The Washington Post published a separate article also citing alleged Hamas documents obtained by Israeli forces that appeared to show plans for an even larger-scale attack against Israel, as well as appeals by Hamas to Iranian officials for greater support. The report said it was unclear whether Iranian leadership was ultimately aware of the plots and cited Israeli and other Middle Eastern officials saying that Tehran expressed anger over not being informed of the attack launched on Oct. 7.

In a follow-up statement, the Iranian Mission told Newsweek: “We regard the Israeli regime as a mendacious criminal, anti-human entity and place no credence in their illusions. They have a long history of spreading falsehoods, fabricating already-counterfeit documents, and conducting deceptive psychological operations.”

Newsweek has reached out to Israel’s military via email for comment on Saturday during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

According to the alleged meeting minutes cited by the Times, Hamas sent a top official to Lebanon in July 2023 to meet with a senior Iranian commander to request help with hitting sensitive sites at the beginning of the planned attack. The commander told Hamas that Iran and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, were supportive of the attack in principle but needed extra time to prepare.

The purported minutes also planned a meeting for Hamas to further discuss the attack with Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s former leader who Israel killed in a strike last month. The minutes did not clarify if the meeting actually happened.

According to these documents, Hamas felt it had general support from its allies, but thought it might need to go through with the attack without their full involvement.

The trove reported on by the Washington Post included a document entitled “Strategy to build an appropriate plan to Liberate Palestine” that detailed Hamas plans to strike Israel from multiple fronts and also target skyscrapers, railways, a shopping mall, and theater, among other locations. The document deliberated on the feasability of converting fishing vessels to explosive-laden attack craft and deploying horse-drawn assault carriages, along with other schemes.

Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East have been escalating—with fears of an all-out war between Israel, Iran, and Iran’s network of proxies known as the Axis of Resistance, which includes Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen—after Hezbollah’s electronic devices exploded last month in a coordinated attack that it claimed Israel was behind. Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack that killed dozens and injured thousands more.

On October 1, Iran fired a barrage of nearly 200 missiles at Israel, most of which U.S. and Israeli officials said were intercepted. Iran said its attack was in retaliation for Israel killing the head of Hamas in Tehran in July, as well as the killing of Nasrallah along with a senior Iranian military official in Beirut last month and other operations tied to Israel in the region.

On Friday, the U.S. announced new sanctions on Iran’s “ghost fleet” of ships and companies connected to the country’s energy sector in response to the October 1 missile attack.

Update 10/13/2024 12:34 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include additional reporting of alleged Hamas documents as well as further comment provided by Iranian officials.

Scientists in Spain claim to have solved the two lingering mysteries that cling to Christopher Columbus more than five centuries after the explorer died: are the much-travelled remains buried in a magnificent tomb in Seville Cathedral really his? And was the navigator who changed the course of world history really from Genoa – as history has long claimed – or was he actually Basque, Catalan, Galician, Greek, Jewish or Portuguese?

The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second is … wait until Saturday.

The long-running and often competitive theorising has not been helped by his corpse’s posthumous voyages. Although Columbus died in the Spanish city of Valladolid in 1506, he wanted to be buried on the island of Hispaniola, which is today divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. His remains were taken there in 1542, moved to Cuba in 1795, and then brought to Seville in 1898 when Spain lost control of Cuba after the Spanish-American war.

On Thursday, after two decades of DNA testing and research, the forensic medical expert José Antonio Lorente said the incomplete set of remains in Seville Cathedral were indeed those of Columbus.

“Today, thanks to new technology, the previous partial theory that the remains in Seville are those of Christopher Columbus has been definitively confirmed,” said the expert, who led the study at the University of Granada. The conclusion followed comparisons of DNA samples from the tomb with others taken from one of Columbus’s brothers, Diego, and his son Fernando.

The knottier question of the explorer’s precise origins will be revealed in Columbus DNA: His True Origin, a special TV programme shown on Saturday 12 October, the date when Spain celebrates its national day and commemorates Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

While myriad claims have been made about where the navigator was from – the theories include Italy, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, France, Greece, Scotland and a handful of different Spanish regions – the programme-makers insist they now have the answer.

“Twenty-five possible origins and eight finalists but there can be only one,” Spain’s state broadcaster, RTVE, said in a statement.

Lorente, who described the investigation as “very complicated”, remained tight-lipped about its conclusions. “There are some really important results – results that will help us in multiple studies and analyses that should be evaluated by historians,” he told reporters on Thursday.

He has, however, been previously quite blunt that he believed Columbus was Genoese, saying in 2021: “There is no doubt on our part [about his Italian origin], but we can provide objective data that can … close a series of existing theories.”

The scientist has also pointed out that parts of Columbus could still be in the Caribbean. In 1877, an excavation of Santo Domingo Cathedral in the Dominican Republic unearthed a small lead box of bone fragments marked: “Illustrious and distinguished male, Christopher Columbus.” Those remains are now buried at the Faro a Colón monument (Columbus Lighthouse) in Santo Domingo Este.

Lorente said that as both sets of bones were incomplete, both could belong to the explorer.

If, as the programme and the attendant hype suggest, the fascination with Columbus remains undimmed, so, increasingly, does the controversy over his legacy.

In 2015, Ada Colau, then the mayor of Barcelona, joined many on the Spanish left in decrying the 12 October celebrations. “Shame that a nation celebrates a genocide and, on top of that, with a military parade that costs 800,000 euros,” she tweeted.

José María González Santos, the then mayor of Cádiz, agreed. “We never discovered America, we massacred and suppressed a continent and its cultures in the name of God,” he said. “Nothing to celebrate.”

Four years ago, a statue of Columbus in Richmond, Virginia, was torn down, set ablaze and thrown into a lake. A sign reading “Columbus represents genocide” was then placed on the spray-painted foundation that once held the figure.

CNN
 — 

The US military’s top commander in Europe compiled a list of weapons systems the US possesses that could help Ukraine in its fight against Russia that the Biden administration has not yet provided, including air-to-surface missiles and a secure communications network used by NATO.

In an annex attached to a classified report about the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy that was delivered to Congress early last month, Gen. Chris Cavoli outlined a list of US capabilities that could help the Ukrainian military fight more effectively, according to people familiar with the report.

The list included the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, a type of air-launched cruise missile, and a communications system known as the Link 16 — a data sharing network used by the US and NATO that is supposed to enable more seamless communication between battle systems and is particularly useful for air and missile defense command and control. Ukraine has asked for both systems repeatedly, another source familiar with their requests said.

Cavoli’s list does not address why the US hasn’t provided systems that he assesses would be of value. But US officials have previously expressed concerns about sensitive US technology falling into Russian hands, which one source said is likely the holdup with the Link 16 system. The air-to-surface missiles, which are fired from fighter jets, might not be useful to the Ukrainians unless they achieve some level of air superiority, the source added.

Nearly three years into the war, the Ukrainians are still pleading with the US to provide more advanced weaponry and lift restrictions on how long-range missile systems provided by the US can be used. And with the US presidential election less than one month away, the future of the US’ support for Ukraine is uncertain, even as the US says it is working to make sure Ukraine has what it needs to last them through at least the end of 2025.

The Ukrainian government continues to lobby hard. When President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Joe Biden at the White House late last month, he came armed with a detailed list—not of weapons, but of targets inside Russia that he wants to hit with US-provided long-range missiles, known as ATACMS, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

The list is a key part of Zelensky’s “victory plan” for winning the war. Biden, who has to date prohibited the Ukrainians from deploying the missile systems for deep strikes into Russia, was not entirely dismissive of the request, the sources said. But he was ultimately non-committal.

The leaders agreed to keep discussing the issue. But Biden won’t be meeting with Zelensky again in the near future after he canceled a trip to Germany for a gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group this week, and it remains unlikely that the US will change its policy on long-range missiles, officials told CNN.

Broadly, US officials say they are giving Ukraine everything that the US military assesses Kyiv needs at this moment to support its fight. Officials also argue that that the US’ limited supply of long-range ATACMS systems are better used against targets in Crimea. The Ukrainians have already conducted several successful strikes deep inside Russia using their own long-range drones that have damaged Russia’s defense industrial base, US officials note — drones that in fact have a far longer range than the ATACMs.

US officials have also said that Russia has moved some of its most valuable targets outside of the ATACMS’ 180-mile range, anyway. The Ukrainians have argued, though, that there are plenty of Russian assets within range, including military bases and production and logistics facilities, that would make for strategic targets.

As a way to “Trump-proof” US security aid, should former President Donald Trump win in November, the US and its allies have been working on ways to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs through the end of 2025. NATO has established its own mechanism for facilitating aid and military training, which was launched in July. The Pentagon is also getting closer to offering contracts to private American companies to travel to the country and help with the equipment sustainment and logistics there, officials said, a key part of making sure Ukraine’s weapons and equipment don’t break down at key moments.

Broadly, though, the US is hoping that 2025 marks a turning point for Russia’s ability to sustain its own war effort.

Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of fighters in close to three years of fighting. To make any substantial gains on the battlefield, officials have long believed President Vladimir Putin will need to order another politically risky troop mobilization. And both US officials and independent analysts say that although the Kremlin has successfully shielded its economy from some of the bite of western sanctions in the near-term, there are some signs that its economy may begin to show strain by the end of next year.

Putin “always thinks Americans have attention deficit disorder,” CIA Director Bill Burns said during a national security conference in Sea Island, Georgia, on Monday. “This is one of those cases where we have to demonstrate the strength of our support for Ukraine, because there’s a lot riding on this.”

Still, critics say that the administration’s plan for victory in Ukraine remains fuzzy. According to one source who read the report, the classified strategy delivered to Congress defined victory only in vague terms of Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination. In another classified annex, it suggested categorized that might be used to judge success, such as reclaimed territory, but provided no benchmarks.

For now, the picture on the battlefield remains fluid. Russia has made grinding gains in the country’s east, which officials see as Putin’s priority. Ukraine earlier in the year seized a huge swath of territory inside Russia that it continues to hold, for now, a move that some officials believe may stretch Kyiv too thin across the front lines in the east.

In the late afternoon on 7 October, an Israeli software engineer in his mid-30s found himself driving down a deserted road parallel to the perimeter fence that separated Gaza from Israel. He had been fighting for hours with an AK-47 taken from a dead Hamas militant. Now he and three friends were headed to the town of Ohad to search for relatives who had gone missing.

“Only when we set off south did we understand how big this was. It was like an apocalypse,” the engineer, who did not want to be named, said last week. “There were hundreds of bodies of civilians inside their cars or on the road, hundreds of dead terrorists with their pickup trucks or motorbikes. There were dead police, army vehicles on fire. We were alone.”

He was among scores, possibly hundreds, of Israelis who headed independently to the combat zone around Gaza on the morning of the raid launched by Hamas on 7 October last year. Many were lauded as heroes by their compatriots, but that they were needed at all underlined the deep failures of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that, a year on, remain part of the traumatic legacy of the attack for millions of Israelis.

The continuing recriminations are part of a bitter broader argument over who to blame for the biggest security failure in Israel since the foundation of the country in 1948. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has avoided accepting responsibility, though several senior military and intelligence officials have resigned or admitted their errors.

In all, about 1,200 were killed in the raid launched by Hamas. Most of the dead were civilians, many murdered in their homes or at a music festival. Victims included children and elderly people. A UN inquiry found reasonable grounds to believe that attackers committed sexual violence at several locations, including rape and gang-rape. Hamas militants, and other extremists from Gaza who followed them, also seized about 250 hostages, of which approximately 100 remain in the territory.

Since the attack, Israel media has picked over what went wrong. A picture has emerged of top commanders caught between their growing concern after warnings of a possible mass attack into southern Israel from Gaza, and the prevailing belief among senior officers and the top political leadership that Hamas had been deterred by repeated bouts of conflict. Many officials were convinced that huge sums of direct aid sent into Gaza from Qatar and other economic incentives such as permits for Palestinian labourers to work in Israel had also convinced Hamas, which had been in power since 2007, to forgo violence in at least the short term. At a counter-terrorism conference months before the attack, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, Israeli’s main foreign intelligence service, did not mention Hamas in a speech about potential threats to the country.

“We were complacent and lazy and suffered a sort of groupthink and we are going to pay a huge price for that,” one military intelligence officer, a specialist in Gaza, told the Guardian shortly after the 7 October attack.

A second big problem was the faith placed in the supposedly impregnable billion-dollar fence built around the territory.

Reservist officers who had served several tours around Gaza were shocked by a new attitude among IDF officers in the year before the attacks.

“There were vehicles that simply didn’t run, equipment that didn’t work, patrols that didn’t happen because there was no threat. When we asked how we were meant to fight back if there was a big attack, they told us … it just wouldn’t happen,” a reservist combat medic said last month.

“We were told that the first line of defence is Hamas, because they’ve got too much to lose now by an attack and will themselves restrain their own people, and anyway then there’s the fence, which no one can get through. I actually argued with my senior officers over this but it went nowhere.”

Just days before the attack, a series of mistakes were made. Concerned local military commanders ordered assessments, which reported intense training by elite Hamas fighters, but failed to act. When dozens, possibly hundreds, of Israeli sim cards suddenly were connected to Israeli networks in the early hours of 7 October, Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, sent only a small team to the border. At a hastily convened meeting at about 3.30am on 7 October, senior IDF officers remained unsure if the unusual Hamas activity in Gaza was a training exercise or preparation for an attack.

But though public anger at intelligence services has been great, some of the most bitter reproaches have been levelled at the IDF itself for failing to mobilise faster to defend communities. Though some regular military units, the police and other services did deploy in the first hours of the 7 October attack, it was often small groups of reservists who had grabbed uniforms or weapons at home who joined the battle, sometimes playing decisive roles.

Nimrod Palmach, a reservist major and the chief executive of an Israeli NGO, defied orders to join his special forces unit in Jerusalem and drove south after hearing that “thousands of terrorists” were in the kibbutz of Nir Oz, where 46 of about 400 residents were killed by militants going from house to house and 72 were abducted, according to the UN.

“I just took a handgun and went as far as I could. I realised that every moment, people were being killed. I left a video testament on my phone for my kids so it could be found if I was killed myself,” he said.

Armed with an assault rifle taken from a dead Hamas militant, Palmach took body armour from a dead soldier and fought for hours alongside other reservists and small groups of regular soldiers around the kibbutz of Be’eri, where, according to the UN report, 105 residents of the kibbutz were killed by the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied group, as well as armed civilians from Gaza.

“At the beginning it was just us and special forces who were coming from their homes but as the day went by more and more sporadic [regular IDF] forces arrived. By late afternoon, the full IDF came, in full gear, combat battalions. A lot of good fighters were waiting for directions and orders which never came,” Palmach said.

One reason for the slow response was that the IDF’s forces around Gaza were fighting for their lives through the critical first hours of the Hamas attack when most casualties were inflicted. Defenders were not at full strength because of the holiday weekend – the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah – and only a few hundred soldiers were scattered in small detachments around the perimeter fence. Many were killed or abducted when their positions were overrun; others fought desperately for hours to avoid the same fate. A heavy assault on the main local headquarters at Re’im, just a kilometre from the Nova festival, was nearly successful, which in part explains the apparent paralysis of local commanders and their superiors. Critical surveillance and communications gear was knocked out in the attack.

“There was no central command so we didn’t know what to do and where to go … There was no connection between the units,” said a special forces soldier who was one of the first to reach the combat zone. “We were too few, and [when] we tried to get into the kibbutzim we were attacked by hundreds of Hamas men – we pulled back to wait for bigger forces.”

Several of those interviewed by the Guardian remembered how the situation began to stabilise late on 7 October, though fighting continued for more than 48 hours as remaining militants were found and killed. Some stayed on to help, others drove back to the homes they had left just 10 or 12 hours before. As the initial shock wore off, they tried to understand the day’s events.

“We always trained to attack, to be aggressive … but it was the opposite,” said the special forces soldier. “I still [see] … the dead kids, burned bodies, the girls at the festival.”

As for the engineer, he has yet to make sense of what went wrong on 7 October 2023.

“I actually just really don’t know what happened,” he told the Guardian. “I keep thinking about it. But I don’t know.”