In 2021, the Danube Institute launched a podcast series titled Reflections from Budapest, in which we have had several thought-provoking discussions about religious conflict, religious violence, and reconciliation. At the end of 2023, after Hamas’s brutal massacre on 7 October in Israel, we launched a new series focusing on the Middle East and the ramifications of the Israel–Hamas war.
On 13 February 2024 we had the great honour of having a discussion with Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Yaron Buskila, who is the CEO of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) and an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) commander serving in the reserves as operations officer for the Gaza Division. Previously, Colonel Buskila served as deputy brigade commander, battalion commander, and commander of the Southern Command infantry training base as a special operations officer in the Central Command, and was responsible for many classified operations carried out by the elite IDF unit in Judea and Samaria. The President of Israel awarded the unit that Colonel Buskila commanded a special merit certificate in recognition of all of its work and extraordinary achievements in the war against terrorism.
Colonel Buskila’s Heroic Role in Fighting Against Terrorism on 7 October
As operations officer for the Gaza Division of the IDF, Colonel Buskila lives near the Gaza Strip and his division’s headquarters, which was infiltrated by 40 Hamas terrorists on 7 October. That morning, as soon as he heard the sirens, he called his commander and drove to the headquarters. Due to the terrorist infiltrations, the journey, which would usually take 45 minutes, took him three hours. Colonel Buskila first encountered terrorists on his way to the Gaza Division’s headquarters as they ambushed his force from the foliage along the roads and from elsewhere, wearing IDF uniforms and using IDF equipment that they had captured. Colonel Buskila only realized how many terrorists had infiltrated the base when he got to the gate and saw it open with bullet holes, several motorcycles next to it, and the body of an IDF soldier. Colonel Buskila had to take the murdered IDF soldier’s gun, then went inside and fought for several hours against 40 terrorists in his base. As Colonel Buskila explained, initially, more than 120 terrorists tried to infiltrate the base, but an IDF tank managed to stop and kill 80 terrorists; therefore, 40 of them were able to make their way through the base. While Colonel Buskila was fighting at the base, his commander, who lives further away from the base, on his way found himself in the middle of the massacre of the Nova party, where he evacuated as many Israeli civilians as he could.
When an elite unit of the IDF arrived at the Gaza Division headquarters, Colonel Buskila went to another base, where they set up an emergency operation room to coordinate the units and send them to the places which were infiltrated by Hamas. At that time Colonel Buskila still didn’t see the full picture of the scale of the attack, so he opened his phone and was shocked to see the number of missed calls he got from Israeli civilians crying for help. The first phone call he was able to take was from a resident he knew from Kibbutz Nirim, who said to him, ‘I’m with my kids, holding my door and terrorists trying to open it and come inside, please come and help me.’ Colonel Buskila managed to send a group of soldiers and civilians who offered to help to save them and the endless number of people who called. In the base, Colonel Buskila and his team tried to write down on a whiteboard the names and locations that were attacked by Hamas,
and there were so many that even the windows were full of names.
Colonel Buskila drove back from the Gaza Division headquarters at night, witnessing the shocking aftermath of the massacre, including murdered bodies and burned vehicles. Following 7 October, he participated in the IDF’s efforts to regain control of all the villages and military bases that had been infiltrated. He highlighted that although they regained control, it took an additional month to locate all the terrorists who were still hiding in Arabic villages or fields within Israel.
‘2500 terrorists and hundreds, maybe one thousand Gazan civilians took part in the murdering of Israeli civilians on 10/7’
Colonel Buskila was also among those officials who observed and identified the bodies of the Israeli civilians who fell victim to the brutal massacre. Following the 48 to 70 hours of the attack, he went through all of the kibbutzim and places where these atrocities happened and collected the victim’s bodies. An organization called ZAKA Search and Rescue documented the bodies to have evidence of the brutality that took place, then tried to identify these bodies, which was in many cases almost impossible as they were tortured, mutilated or burned. The CEO of ZAKA stated, ‘7 October is not just another event. I have experienced almost everything: during my service in the IDF identifying casualties, as a ZAKA member for more than two decades, in my role as an adviser to the director of the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, and in my work in the largest Jewish burial society in the world, Chevra Kadisha Tel Aviv-Jaffa. I witnessed disasters, wars, terrorist attacks, and almost every case of unnatural death. But what we saw here, we could not fathom.’
Colonel Buskila highlighted that what was also shocking for him is that he ‘always believed that on the other side of the fence, in Gaza, there’re only a few Arabs who would actually commit something like that.’ He stressed that he was raised to think like that; however, 10/7 showed that the reality is different. As he explained, ‘there were two waves of the attack: in the first, there were the 2500 terrorists who infiltrated Israel and then in the second wave hundreds, maybe one thousand Gazan civilians took advantage of the fact that their border was open and rushed into Israel with knives just to kill people and steal.’ He added that these Gazans didn’t spare anything, and after they killed Israeli civilians in the kibbutzim, they stole everything, even the batteries, from those Israeli civilians’ cars whom they murdered. Colonel Buskila highlighted that prior to 10/7 in these kibbutzim, many people thought the same as him, that the majority of Gazans want to have peace and recalled that a year ago, even a ceremony was held in Kibbutz Be’eri, where Arab and Israeli families honoured their sons in the conflict. Colonel Buskila explained that before the 10/7 attack, Israel wanted to believe that Hamas had some responsibility for its citizens and realized how much they could lose if they attacked Israel in such a brutal way. However, as Colonel Buskila explained, 10/7 made every Israeli realize the hard way how different the culture of Gazans is, in which they’re willing to kill Jewish people anywhere and, as the Hamas charter claims,
‘pursue and kill every Jew behind every rock and every tree, not only in Israel but all over the world.’
7 October Further Shattered Trust Between Israelis and Palestinians as Hamas Murdered Those Who Fought for Peace
The fact that Hamas attacked those kibbutzim and murdered those who had fought for peace deepened the conflict and resulted in even less support for a peaceful solution for the conflict. As Colonel Buskila highlighted as well, the targeted region had been far more supportive of engaging in negotiations towards a two-state solution compared to the broader Israeli society, which has notably veered to the right since the breakdown of peace talks more than two decades ago. In Nir Oz, Be’eri, and Kfar Aza—three of the kibbutzim severely affected by the Hamas attacks—right-wing parties secured an average of less than ten per cent of the vote in the 2022 elections. These kibbutzim were once bastions of the left, with individuals actively promoting cooperation with Arabs, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris. However, the 7 October attacks, resulting in the mass killing of civilians, have significantly weakened the left’s standing in Israel.
Colonel Buskila emphasized that if Israel eliminates Hamas, it will result in a better life for both Israel and those Gazans who oppose their rule and the use of their homes, hospitals, kindergartens, and other infrastructure for terrorism. He noted this will also have a positive impact on the entire region. Reacting to the question of whether it’s possible to eliminate Hamas’s ideology, Colonel Buskila highlighted that the IDF can’t fight against ideas as it would be Gazans’ responsibility to educate their kids and future generations. He explained what the IDF could do was to fight against Hamas’s ability to make sure that its mission could not succeed. He added that to act out your ideology, you need to have the ability; therefore, the IDF is fighting to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, its massive number of rockets, and the 500 kilometres underground terror tunnels.
Colonel Buskila explained that since the IDF soldiers are much stronger and the army’s technology is far more advanced than Hamas terrorists, Hamas started to dig these terror tunnels to make the fight ‘symmetric’ for them. Hamas realized that by using tunnels, they could more effectively carry out attacks against Israel from underground, where it was difficult for Israeli soldiers to use drones or aircraft. Colonel Buskila noted that the use of these tunnels enabled Hamas to kidnap the IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, who was a captive of Hamas for five years, and these tunnels were also one of the ways how they were able to attack Israel on 10/7. Colonel Buskila highlighted that the IDF now are much prepared to fight inside these tunnels and invent technologies which could be used underground as well to make the fight for Hamas ‘asymmetric’ again.
IDSF Joint Letter to Biden: Palestinian State Means the End of Israel
As mentioned in the introduction, Colonel Buskila is the CEO of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), a grassroots movement led by retired and reserve senior military, intelligence, and security officers. The movement has over 20,000 members and was founded by Brigadier General (res.) Amir Avivi. IDFS wrote a joint letter in February to the President of the United States Joe Biden, expressing their concern over the proposed recognition of a Palestinian state as part of imposing political solutions on Israel. In their letter, the IDSF urged President Biden to reconsider his position on recognizing Palestine in its current state as it would cause ‘a direct threat to the existence of the State of Israel’. They stated in their letter:
‘The recognition of a Palestinian state in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October massacre will be interpreted by Hamas, global terrorist organizations, Iran and other rogue states as a reward for violence,
and will encourage them to view terrorism as an effective mechanism to achieve political goals.
Israel has followed this reckless dynamic in the past by agreeing to the Oslo Accords following the First Intifada and carrying out the Disengagement from Gaza following the Second Intifada. We learned how the appetite only grows with concessions and how this threatens Israel and the rest of the free world.’
They added that the Palestinian Authority (PA) also doesn’t intend to reform its ‘Pay to Slay’ policy, allocating $370 million annually to terrorists and their education system, which promotes anti-Semitic ideology, advocating for the murder of Jews to achieve Palestinian national goals. They also stressed that the Palestinian Authority has refused to condemn the 10/7 attack and will pay more than $2.7 million monthly to the perpetrators of it. Moreover, they noted that since 7 October, the IDF has arrested more than 3000 terrorists and has uncovered immense military infrastructure in areas controlled by the PA whose purpose was to attack Israel, and the PA has declared that it considers Hamas a legitimate organization that should take part in the Palestinian political scene. They highlighted that the most likely scenario would be that a Palestinian state would be ruled by Hamas, which is much more popular than Fatah.
The letter concluded: ‘IDSF is a movement oriented towards seeking peace and security for the State of Israel. As leaders who have fought and bled for our country, we desire nothing more than for the conflict to be resolved. However, wishing it away by decreeing a Palestinian State will only lead to the emboldening of our enemies and the expansion of the conflict. On 10 October 2023, you declared, “For 75 years, Israel has stood as the ultimate guarantor of security of Jewish people around the world so that the atrocities of the past could never happen again.” And it is for that exact reason that following the 7 October massacre, we must oppose any proposal to recognize a Palestinian state.’
You can listen to the episode of the Reflections from Budapest podcast series with Colonel (res.) Yaron Buskila here.
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