Elkana Federman, who served as security chief for the Nova music festival and now leads the Tekuma party, said he received a recorded message about a week before the October 7 massacre warning of possible trouble along the Gaza border.
Speaking to Einat Meyron on the Maariv podcast, Federman said the message came from a security guard scheduled to work at the festival who was also serving as a soldier in the IDF’s Gaza Division. Sent on September 26, 2023, the recording referred to the possibility of “trouble” during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
In the recording, the guard can be heard saying: “I wanted to tell you something, so you know. I’m serving here in the Gaza Division, in Re’im, near where the Unity festival is. As the whole country knows, the situation in the Gaza sector isn’t great. Now I’ve also heard from the division’s chief warrant officer, who’s hinting to me that there’s going to be trouble during Sukkot.”
He continued: “I thought it would be better for you to know this too, so it doesn’t catch people there by surprise. That’s broadly what he told me, and the truth is, it might happen and it might not. So I’m telling you so you know.”
'I passed it on to those above me, and they told me everything was fine'
Federman said he forwarded the recording to those above him in the chain of responsibility.
“I listen to the recording, and I pass it on to those above me in the hierarchy,” he said. “They, I assume, checked it with the military and told me everything was fine.”
Although he had never believed Hamas was fully “deterred,” Federman said he had not imagined an attack on the scale of October 7.
“As far as I’m concerned, Hamas has never been deterred. As far as I’m concerned, the West Bank could erupt, Israeli Arabs could erupt, but I wasn’t prepared for anything like this,” he said.
He criticized the assumptions that shaped Israel’s approach before the massacre, saying the country had been “captive to a flawed conception.”
“Maybe we can do this or that with them and give them a good life. As though we’re, I don’t know, Gaza Disneyland,” he said.
Soldiers knew something was happening, Federman said
Federman stressed that, in his view, the recording did not prove there had been specific knowledge of the October 7 attack. Instead, he said, it reflected concerns among soldiers serving along the Gaza border.
“This recording isn’t actually a conspiracy,” he said. “Since I published it, this is what the soldiers were feeling on the ground. At the most basic level. What they felt on the ground, their conversations, and many others who talked about it.”
He said some soldiers had observed unusual Hamas activity before the attack.
“Look, Hamas is conducting exercises, Hamas is training, we’re about to face a different kind of event, and no one listened to them.”
Federman said his ability to respond as a civilian responsible for festival security had been limited.
“What could I do with a recording? I was a civilian,” he said. “On paper, we’re stewards, we’re not armed. What could I do? I did my duty, I passed it on.”
Had he understood the message to be a credible warning of a large-scale attack, he said, he would have acted very differently.
“If I had known, of course I would have passed it on to Ben-Gvir, stopped everything and at least prevented it. But there wasn’t... Who imagined it? Who knew?”
Federman added that, like many others, he realized something unusual was happening on the morning of October 7 only when rocket fire from the Gaza Strip began at around 6:29 a.m.