The female Gaza hostages whose Hamas warnings were ignored
The release of the women of Nahal Oz moves a painful chapter of the Israeli military’s October 7 failure to prevent the attack closer to an end.
With her military base a few hundred metres from the Gaza Strip under attack, Daniella Gilboa pulled out her phone and recorded a video for her boyfriend from the bomb shelter where she and her fellow soldiers talked nervously and hid.
Not long after she hit “send,” Hamas militants, in one of the first waves of the October 7, 2023, attacks, burst in and sprayed the shelter with bullets.
Almost everyone inside was killed. Gilboa survived and became one of seven female hostages taken from the base.
Over the ensuing months, one of the women was rescued.
Another’s dead body was retrieved by Israeli forces.
On Saturday, Gilboa, 20, and three others were released by Hamas under the terms of a week-old ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The others are Karina Ariev, 20; Naama Levy, 20; and Liri Albag, 19.
The last female soldier being held hostage, Agam Berger, will stay behind for at least another week.
The release of the women of Nahal Oz moves a painful chapter of the Israeli military’s October 7 failure to prevent the attack closer to an end.
Their families have grasped for signs of life from other hostages who were released, Israeli intelligence findings, and Hamas propaganda videos.
On Day 107, the families received a video showing Gilboa and Ariev.
On Day 456, another video appeared showing hostage Albag.
The families also have long pushed for a full and independent government inquiry into how the attacks were allowed to happen, why the military couldn’t better contain them or protect the base, and who needs to be held responsible.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that will have to wait until after the war.
The military said it is conducting its own probe into what took place at Nahal Oz to study its performance and draw lessons for the future. It said it would make the findings public.
“After someone dies, you live another life, but you start something,” Shira Albag, Liri Albag’s mother, said in an interview.
“We cannot start anything. We are on the same day, the seventh of October. We feel helpless.” The women who were taken from Nahal Oz served as observers, a position that while known as the “eyes of the army” has never been prestigious.
The job is demanding, has long hours and comes with postings in dangerous areas close to the borders with Gaza, Lebanon or the West Bank.
At Nahal Oz, the unarmed observers were charged with monitoring the Gaza border via camera feeds, forbidden from taking their eyes off their screens or going to the bathroom unless replaced.
They warned for months of signs Hamas might attack, according to soldiers who served on the base, their commanders and families, with whom they shared what they were seeing in text messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
They reported sometimes daily gatherings by Palestinians by the border fence between Israel and Gaza.
At times large groups of Palestinians, some of them armed, would come to the border fence, set tyres on fire to block the cameras, and attempt to breach the fence.
But their warnings were ignored.
The young women were taken in a brutal attack on the base that killed more than 50 soldiers.
The October 7 attack began at 6.29am. The women on duty in the situation room identified dozens of Hamas militants crossing the border and alerted their superiors.
Swarms of militants attacked the base and took control quickly, according to soldiers who survived the attack.
The women caught in the situation room begged for help, but none came.
Instead, the militants set it on fire. One woman escaped through a narrow bathroom window, but most burned to death.
It took forensic scientists weeks of sifting through the charred remains to identify all of the dead.
Elsewhere on the base, soldiers who weren’t on duty raced from their beds still in their pyjamas to the bomb shelter where Gilboa took the video.
The next time the women could be seen was in a video filmed by Hamas around 10am that was obtained by the Israeli military. It shows five female hostages with their hands bound sitting against a wall in front of the dead bodies of their friends.
One of the female soldiers, Albag, told other hostages in Gaza about the event, according to her family, who met with hostages who had been held with her daughter before being freed.
The former hostages said Albag thought it was somehow a mistake that she hadn’t been killed, her mother said in an interview with the Journal in January 2024.
“She didn’t understand how she survived,” Shira Albag said.
The young women’s families told the Journal they learned their daughters had been taken hostage from footage circulated on Telegram.
In one widely seen video on October 7, Levy, then 19, can be seen being pulled by her hair from the back of a pickup truck by Palestinian militants, her pants bloodied and her ankles wounded.
Orly Gilboa, Daniella’s mother, thought her daughter had been killed in the attack until her daughter’s boyfriend sent a video the next day of hostages being taken to Gaza on the back of a jeep.
“He took the video and slowed it down. When he slowed it down, we were able to see Daniella’s head. They put her on the floor of the jeep,” Orly Gilboa said in an interview in September. “From that moment we understood she was alive.”
Levy, Albag and Berger were new recruits and had only arrived at the Nahal Oz base a day earlier to start their mandatory military service.
The night before the attack, the young women gathered for a festive meal to celebrate a soldier who was set to finish her service.
Videos taken that night show them happily eating, singing and dancing. Silver balloons spelling out “Last Disco” hung on the walls.
The former observers on the base who spoke to the Journal said they never felt afraid being stationed so close to the border.
They worked hard in shifts at the situation room and kept each other’s spirits high by cooking together, planning meals and parties, and spending time together on weekends off the base. One TikTok video from before October 7 shows the women dancing, lip syncing and pulling pranks on each other.
But some of their parents and family members felt differently about their safety. They feared the concrete shelters on the base looked exposed, leaving the women with little protection. Observers don’t carry weapons and had limited training in handling them, as their job isn’t considered a combat role.
They were also never prepared for the scenario of an invasion of the base, according to observers who served on the base.
The military said it is reviewing whether observer posts need to be so close to the borders and has moved a number of situation rooms to central bases to make them safer for female soldiers.
On Thursday, a day before Hamas sent Israel the next list of the hostages to be released and ahead of the Jewish Sabbath, the parents of Agam Berger held a Hafrashat Challah ceremony, a ritual for women to separate and bless the Challah dough, at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.
Since Berger’s parents learned from released hostages that their daughter prayed every day in captivity and tried to observe the Sabbath by avoiding lighting fires, they have become more religiously observant.
“The return of our beloved girls is nearing, God willing,” said Berger’s mother, who wore a white hoodie with a photo of her daughter.
“We are eagerly awaiting with anticipation that can’t be described.”
The Wall Street Journal
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