In the early morning hours of October 7, Hamas launched massive rocket attacks on Israel and simultaneously attacked the Jewish state on other fronts, on the ground and at sea - an unprecedented, concerted and targeted act of violence. Israel was surprised not only by the frequency of the rocket attacks, but also by the brutality of the attacks on the ground, which revealed an entirely new dimension. Terrorists were able to penetrate the heavily secured border fence around the Gaza Strip into Israeli localities in the border area, and there were numerous hostage-takings of soldiers and civilians and kidnappings of Israelis in the Gaza Strip.