As the sky began to lighten over Israel's border with Gaza on Wednesday, the people of Kfar Aza moved silently towards the armoury at the centre of the kibbutz. It was there, shortly after 07:00 on 7 October 2023, that Hamas-led attackers killed half the community's 14-member civil defence squad. They were among 64 killed and 19 kidnapped from the community that day.
The pain of those attacks is still fresh here. But three years on, there are questions about who else should pay the price for Israel's security failure. "I need my country to take responsibility," said Inbar Goldstein, whose brother and niece were killed, and four other relatives kidnapped from Kfar Aza.
The 7 October attack was the deadliest Israel had suffered since its creation in 1948. About 1,200 people were killed across southern Israel by gunmen who broke through the border fence and attacked communities there. Another 251 people were taken back to Gaza as hostages.
Three years on from Israel's biggest security failure, there is still no independent state inquiry into how it was allowed to happen. And the man in charge at the time of that failure - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - is running for election again, with the same campaign promise: to be stronger and tougher than anyone else in protecting Israel from its enemies. "Nobody investigated the roots [of the attack].
It didn't start or end on October 7th - it's a long process of abandonment," Goldstein said. Aside from Hamas's responsibility for the attack itself, there are growing questions in Israel around what caused the country's intelligence failure, what information was passed to military and political leaders in the run-up to the attacks, and what Netanyahu himself knew. For months beforehand, young female soldiers posted at bases along the Gaza border to watch for suspicious activity had warned their superiors about possible preparations for an attack.
Among them was Roni Eshel. She was killed with 14 other members of her unit when gunmen overran their base at Nahal Oz, just next to Kfar Aza. "There are so many questions," her uncle Elad Levy told me.
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