Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that he has ordered the IDF to provide the families of surveillance soldiers killed or abducted in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught with the full recordings of their last radio communications, after the army sent them apparently edited versions.

In a statement issued by his office, Katz said he told the army to provide the families with the full recordings, “with the exception of limited sections that are restricted due to clear security reasons, and this is due to the need for full transparency with the families.”

The IDF already said earlier that some portions of the recordings were removed due to privacy concerns, as the omitted sections included conversations with combat soldiers.

“The IDF is committed to the bereaved families, and does not hide any information from them,” the military said in a new statement following Katz’s comments.

The military said it sent the families the recordings on Monday, after several re-examinations of the audio. It added that the tapes sent to the families only include those in which the voices of the surveillance soldiers can be heard.

The IDF also said it would allow all of the families to coordinate visits to the military to hear the entire recordings, adding that it has “no intention of causing further suffering to the families and is sorry for any harm was caused.”

Relatives of the surveillance soldiers told Hebrew media that they were only given the recordings from early in the morning of October 6 until that same evening. Hamas’s invasion of Israel began early on the morning of October 7.

Eyal Eshel, whose daughter, Roni, was on shift when the invasion began and could be heard in recordings released earlier announcing the first terrorists crossing the border, said he believed the army had lied to the families.

At first, he told Channel 12 News on Tuesday evening, the families were told the recordings had been destroyed in the attack, but that did not make sense to him because the Nahal Oz surveillance base was technologically advanced. The only reason he could think of for the army lying about the recordings was that it wanted to hide something, he added.

“They disregarded those girls before Saturday, October 7, they disregarded them that Saturday, they are disregarding us, the families, now. I guess we’re bothering them,” he said.

He added that he believed the IDF was trying to hide the fact that the surveillance soldiers warned of an impending attack before it began that morning but that they weren’t listened to.

“We know that the whole area was seeing some sort of activity because the surveillance soldiers weren’t told for no reason to log into the systems and scan the areas of Shejaiya,” he said referring to an area in Gaza.

Because of the limited time span of the recordings, some of the families did not get to hear their loved ones’ voices at all, including those of Hadar Cohen, Noa Price and Adi Landman because they were not on shift in that time frame.

Hadar’s father, Yigal, said that she had begun her shift after the last recordings they were given.

“We waited for it for so long, and we’re very disappointed,” he told Ynet on Tuesday. “We waited to hear her, but they didn’t update us before about what we were going to hear, and she wasn’t there. We got nothing at all I want to hear Hadar’s last words. I want to hear her final moments, it’s very important to me.”

Noa’s mother, Sigal, told Ynet the army had “done nothing to restore our faith” with the recordings it gave the families.

Adi’s father, Barak, told Ynet that the IDF’s conduct was “disgraceful” and made the families think it had something to hide.

Even relatives of soldiers who did appear in the recordings said it was clear they were incomplete.

Dror Ashram, whose daughter Shay was killed in Hamas’s attack, said he heard her laugh which made him “sad and happy at the same time.”

“It was nice to hear it, but we were disappointed that the recordings were partial. They shortened them a lot,” he told Ynet.

Following the families’ outrage, President Isaac Herzog said in a statement that it was time for an investigative panel to be convened to probe the failures that led to the attack being possible.

“The cry of the surveillance soldiers’ families and many bereaved families who have reached out to me breaks my heart and underlines the urgent need for a legal national investigation committee. We have to restore their faith in the state and the security establishment with an investigation and deep learning about the failure of October 7,” he said.

Thousands of Hamas soldiers crossed the border on October 7 last year, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in various southern communities and taking 251 hostages.

Among the locations overrun by terrorists was the Nahal Oz surveillance base where 15 surveillance soldiers were killed and seven were taken hostage to Gaza. One of the hostages was rescued and another, Noa Marciano, was recovered dead after she was murdered in captivity. The other five — Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Naama Levy and Daniella Gilboa — are still hostages.