Forty U.S. Army soldiers who were in Israel as the advance team for what they thought was a routine training exercise last October 7 suddenly found themselves in the middle of a war, unarmed, and being forced to beg reluctant Pentagon officials to send an Air Force plane to extract them.
Approximately a quarter of the soldiers were just miles from Gaza in off-base housing near the IDF’s Tze’elim base when the attack began. A group of local Israelis – IDF reservists, police officers, and ordinary citizens – got them to the base, which Hamas terrorists were quickly heading toward. With his men in mortal danger, the U.S. team leader requested permission to open the arms locker so they could retrieve their firearms but was denied at the US Central Command level and “denied and/or ignored” at a level above that, according to a military intelligence analyst with knowledge of the mission and exfiltration.
The rest of the soldiers had just arrived in Tel Aviv, where Hamas rockets were hitting near their hotels.
The military intelligence analyst told RedState:
“With everything going on, with all kinds of indirect fire, with rockets, for a good six, eight hours those [soldiers who were at Tze’elim] were in very mortal danger and the military and civilian leadership [at the Pentagon] was perfectly willing to not even worry about it.”
Approximately 40 hours after the attacks started, and only after lengthy “conversations at the 3-star HQ level,” a U.S. Air Force C-17 briefly touched down in Tel Aviv to exfiltrate the soldiers.
Hamas fired a barrage of 150 rockets at the airport shortly after the C-17 took off for Kuwait.
Without the quick assistance of Israeli civilians and reservists the unarmed Americans likely would have been taken hostage by Hamas and perhaps faced the same fate as those in Benghazi according to the analyst, who praised the Israelis’ actions:
“Really, October 7 more than anything is a testament to the grit of a lot of the Israeli reserve soldiers who immediately stepped in, or the Israeli security guards around the kibbutzim and places like that who just stepped in and immediately began to act on their training and effectively blunted many of these attacks.”
Thanks to three separate military sources – one of whom was personally involved in the mission – who spoke to RedState exclusively, the harrowing and disturbing story can now be told. The sources are not named due to fear of retaliation.
OPERATION IRON BISON
The U.S. Army advance team was in Israel to prepare for the two-week, live-fire joint training exercise, named Operation Iron Bison. The exercise was scheduled to kick off during the third week in October at the IDF’s Urban Warfare Training Center at Tze’elim in Southern Israel, southwest of Be’er Sheva.
IDF Urban Warfare Training Center
at Zeelim Army Base 🇮🇱“Visiting American troops and forces from European allies — most recently Cypriot soldiers — have also trained in Mini Gaza.”https://t.co/AiHHordKgB pic.twitter.com/S6f93gdQqu
— Rod Sales 🏹 ✡︎🎗️ (@sanhedrin72a4) June 23, 2022
About 400 U.S. soldiers – infantry, armor, and aviation units – who were deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Spartan Shield were slated to participate.
THE ADVANCE TEAM
A few weeks before October 7 a group of about 10 U.S. Army logisticians arrived in Israel to get to work at Tze’elim and were staying off-base in the Be’er Sheva area. A few days before October 7 the remainder of the 40-soldier advance team arrived in Tel Aviv and were staying at hotels in central Tel Aviv.
When each group arrived in Israel and received a standard country briefing there was no indication of any potential hostilities from Hamas, the Army officer who participated in the events said, adding:
“There was far more concern about Lebanon and the West Bank than there was Gaza.
“There was no expectation that they were going to be in any more danger than any other army exercise is.”
The soldiers at Tze’elim had their service weapons with them in Israel, but they were secured in an arms locker on the base until the time of the exercise. However, the majority of the weapons and ammunition that would be used in the exercise was being sent to Israel with armor from the 155th Armor Brigade from the Mississippi National Guard via ship to the Port of Eliat on the Red Sea. On October 7 that ship was near the entrance to the Red Sea, but turned around and headed to Kuwait after the Hamas attacks began.
There’s never been an official acknowledgment that there were U.S. troops in Israel on October 7, but an October 31, 2023, New York Times story states: “But other U.S. officials said the Defense Department has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent days, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on Oct. 7 conducting previously scheduled training.”
OCTOBER 7
On the morning of October 7, the soldiers in Tel Aviv awoke to sirens and the sound of rockets hitting nearby, and the soldiers near Be’er Sheva woke up to chaos. According to a military intelligence official, those soldiers “were at their off-base accommodations” and “within minutes, you had Israeli reservists, police officers, and armed civilians” helping to get the Americans to the base at Tze’elim:
“When the attack began…there was a large group of Hamas headed straight for the side of the base the Americans were at. Hamas had very detailed information of people and places…..We now know Hamas knew exactly where the American soldiers were staying, and that they had a list of all their names and ranks as well.”
Simply getting to the base didn’t take them out of harm’s way. For a short period of time, they and their Israeli friends were taking hostile fire, according to the military intelligence official. The U.S. team leader sought permission for his team to retrieve their weapons from the locker, but that was denied at the U.S. European Command level. He then actioned the request further up and it was ignored and/or denied. According to that source, the Israelis then allowed the Americans to use some of their rifles.
The soldiers and their Israeli counterparts knew that it wasn’t safe for them to remain in the country. Army Officers back in Kuwait at the Task Force Spartan headquarters put in a request to CENTCOM for air extraction for both the soldiers at Tze’elim and the soldiers in Tel Aviv. According to the Army officer who spoke to RedState, the Air Force was reluctant to perform any air extraction at all, let alone two.
Finally – after a few conversations took place at the 3-star HQ level – the Air Force agreed to send a C-17 to Tel Aviv. It should be noted, though, that all of the sources who spoke to RedState emphasized that both the Army and Air Force officers below the “political” rank (3-star) were determined throughout to get our people back and faced intense opposition from their superiors, but were ultimately successful in getting the flight approved.
So now the soldiers down at Tze’elim had to get from the Be’er Sheva area to Tel Aviv, to the military terminal at the airport, without their service weapons.
The map below, from Oct7map.com, shows the locations where people were killed/injured/taken hostage on October 7, and also the locations of Tze’elim and Tel Aviv (starred).
Again, it was because of the local Israelis who’d been helping the U.S. logisticians that they eventually got to Tel Aviv. The military intelligence source said:
“They created a mini convoy and went through a running gun battle to get them to a safe place where they could then obtain transportation to Tel Aviv.”
On the night of October 8, the soldiers made their way to the military terminal at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv for the exfiltration.
The C-17 was on the ground for less than a half hour, all of the sources said, just long enough to get fuel and “get everybody accounted for and loaded up.”
USAF C-17A 06-6155 #AE1459 as MOOSE41 departed Tel Aviv, heading east over Jordanian airspace pic.twitter.com/xSOXvlgDUb
— Johnny Gemini (@Borrowed7Time) October 8, 2023
Rockets started landing at the airport shortly after they were wheels up:
Loud explosions could be heard across central Israel and the suburbs of Tel Aviv late Sunday, according to CNN teams on the ground.
Hamas has claimed it is targeting the Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel’s international hub, which is located just outside Tel Aviv.
According to the military intelligence source, it’s only through the determination and loyalty of the Israelis “who were willing to quickly grab the Americans, secure them, and begin the process of spiriting them away to safety” that the soldiers who’d been at Tze’elim weren’t captured by Hamas and eventually safely arrived in Tel Aviv. That was a sharp contrast to the attitude of the National Command Authority, the source says:
“If the timing had gone, they would have been taken hostage, and you would have seen the propaganda videos of American troops being held and, let’s be honest, knowing how our White House team would respond.”
For all of the criticism of Israel’s intelligence service in the wake of the October 7 attacks, it’s clear that the United States was caught just as off-guard, and that failure quite easily could have cost some or all of these soldiers their lives and dragged the United States into open combat. And, just like Benghazi, the bean counters in Washington were content to leave the Americans to their own devices and not provide an escape plan. Fortunately, this didn’t happen in a hostile country – or the results would have been quite different.
