Both the police and the IDF completely ignored all security dangers regarding the Nova music festival leading into and during Hamas’s October 7 invasion of southern Israel, it appears based on the IDF's October 7 probe issued on Thursday.
The police still have not issued their own probe and did not respond to requests for comment.
There has also been a large controversy over whether to place greater blame on the police or the IDF regarding the Nova music festival disaster.
The IDF and police's key failures in Nova music festival massacre
Some of the key failures for both were: Approving the Nova music festival to occur so close to the border, such negligence in the approval process, not cancelling the party despite dangerous invasion signs on October 6, and failing to send anywhere near sufficient forces to save the partygoers. The probe distributes blame across-the-board on these issues.
The police come in for blame as they approved the party without hesitation and made no changes at any point to cancel the party or to send extra forces to rescue the partygoers.
General approvals for holding such events, taking into account typical local security and logistics factors, are primary the police responsibility.
The IDF only comes into the picture for such events if there is a special factor, such as here being close to the border, and only approves the event from a national security outlook.
IDF gave approval for Gaza border festival, despite initial objections
As to the IDF’s approval, the picture is complex.
First of all, there were actually two separate parties in the area: The Unity party and the Nova party.
The two parties took place in the exact same place, with Unity running from October 5-6, a 10 hour pause between the parties on October 6, and the Nova party starting around 10:00 p.m. on October 6 and continuing into October 7.
Separate tickets and state approvals were required for each party even though they used the same logistics and security staff.
Originally, only the Unity party had gotten all necessary approvals, including from Israeli air defense, by September 30.
But on October 2, event organizers asked for the permit to be extended from the Unity part of October 5-6 to October 7 to include the Nova party.
The police immediately agreed to the extension, but IDF Gaza Division Head Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld and Northern Brigade Commander Col. Haim Cohen objected at first.
They said on October 2 that combining an additional large event with the Simchat Torah holiday and the weekend would create too much of a security burden for the very limited (halved) IDF forces on duty.
However, on October 4 they relented and approved the extension of the permit to include the Nova party.
Not only did the police continue to support holding the event, but when the issue was presented to the head of Operations for the Southern Command who consulted with the command’s legal adviser, Rosenfeld and Cohen were reminded that IDF policy was to allow all events unless there was evidence of an immediate threat.
Even retrospectively, there was no evidence of an immediate threat on October 4. As such, Rosenfeld and Cohen relented and approved the Nova party.
It is noteworthy that the air defense authorities approved the extension for the Nova party even before Rosenfeld and Cohen switched from objecting to approving, suggesting that there was a culture of the IDF sometimes raising initial objections, only to drop them later.
In any case, Rosenfeld was higher ranked than the head of Operations for the Southern Command and could have continued to block the Nova party, given that IDF Southern Command Chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkleman was never involved.
Rosenfeld and Cohen have been held as some of the most responsible officers on the ground for the failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7 invasion.
Gaza Division chief Rosenfeld was forced to resign in June 2024 and Cohen was forced to resign in December 2024 over their roles in the disaster.
According to other IDF probes, Rosenfeld failed to acknowledge that his forces were beaten – which they mostly were by 7:30 a.m. on October 7 – which meant that IDF high command did not fully realize this until the early afternoon.
This caused an even heavier delay in sending large reinforcements.
Cohen has been criticized for holding up in IDF command posts – essentially being cut off and clueless about the status of his forces at Nova, Sderot, Be'eri, Nahal Oz, and Nativ Ha'Asara – failing to go into the field to assist them as IDF Gaza Southern Brigade Col. Assaf Hamami did.
Hamami was eventually killed and his body was taken to Gaza by Hamas, but he was credited with saving lives in the early period of the invasion.
According to the probe, leading into the Nova party, although the Gaza Division Northern Brigade operations head and the IDF Home Front Command Southern Command representative (both mid-level officials) did a modest patrol of the grounds for the party beforehand, no one held a security situational meeting to set the force posture and strategy for protecting the party in the event of a security problem.
No additional IDF forces were sent to the area as should have been done, said the probe.
Col. Cohen said he assumed that the battalion commander would know to do this and the battalion commander did nothing in that regard.
This meant that lower level forces in the field did not even know that the party was happening, such that when the invasion broke out, no one even knew to think about assisting the partygoers.
The police had no forward command center for the event, as should be standard for such sizable events, especially near the border.
At the IDF meetings held on the eve of the invasion regarding the Israeli SIM cards which were activated in Gaza, no officials even mentioned the Nova party – something which now appears unthinkable, given that there were around 3,500 attendees, larger than many villages in the area.
Also, the probe stated that there was no coordination between the police and the IDF in responding to Hamas’s invasion, neither in the initial hour, nor in the hours during the second and third waves of the invasion.
This meant a complete inefficient use of forces and resources.
The fact that 90% of the partygoers were saved was only because:
1. A mid-level police commander at the party ordered an immediate evacuation on his own authority as soon as the massive rocket fire started around 6:30 a.m.
2. Hamas did not know the party was happening and so they did not start attacking the area until 8:12 a.m., leaving almost 100 minutes for partygoers to evacuate.
However, due to all of the above errors, the remaining over 400 partygoers were essentially left defenseless once Hamas invaders noticed their presence in the Re'im field areas.
