The words came slowly, the voice strained—but they were not improvised.
Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin stood before reporters Friday with tears in his eyes and steel in his voice. He was not merely announcing a repositioning of IDF forces in Gaza. He was bearing witness to something deeper: the moral reckoning of an army that vowed never again to be caught off guard.
“On the morning of Simchat Torah… we were not there for Israeli citizens in their hour of need,” Defrin said, speaking plainly about the IDF’s failure on October 7, 2023. No evasions. No euphemisms. Just a soldier, standing in the gap.
That gap—the one between Israel’s civilians and those who seek to murder them—has since been closed. Not with speeches, but with blood.
What followed October 7 was not just a military campaign. It was a national repentance in uniform. From the general staff to the front line, the IDF knew it had to pay for its failure—not with gestures, but with results. That resolve has shaped every battlefield choice, every operational risk, every funeral.
And now, nearly two years later, Defrin’s voice shook not from emotion alone, but from the weight of fulfillment.
“This operation produced unprecedented achievements across all sectors and enabled the return of hostages,” he said, referencing the looming release of the final 48 Israeli hostages in the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.
The troops, now repositioned along the so-called “yellow line” in Gaza, remain on high alert, fully empowered to respond to any threat. As Defrin emphasized, “We will do whatever is necessary to ensure the safety and security of the southern Negev communities, the south of the country, and the State of Israel as a whole.”
But even as the military posture shifts, the core mission has not. “We have not ceased fighting for a moment, and so it shall always be,” Defrin said. The shame of 2023 has been transfigured into unshakable clarity.
Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, commander of the Southern Command, made that clear when he addressed the soldiers of the 828th “Bislamach” Brigade—many of whom fought in the heart of Gaza.
“This is not a regular military formation,” he said. “This is a formation of victory—a victory of good over evil, of light over darkness, of a nation that sanctifies life against vile, murderous barbarians.”
The Israel Defense Forces, like the country it defends, has no margin for illusion. That is one of the hard lessons learned from Oct. 7.
“We rose from the ashes,” said Asor. “And we have not ceased, and we will not cease until we bring back all our brothers—the living, and those who are not among the living.”
The commanders of the IDF see the outcome now unfolding as payment of a sacred debt—to the hostages, to the fallen, and to the generation that was left unprotected.
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