A LONG READ, BUT A VERY INTERESTING ONE

Like sadistic Nazis: Secret Hamas papers reveal step-by-step action plan for Oct. 7

Uncovered documents and eyewitness accounts obtained by Israel Hayom and Bild reveal the chilling extent of Hamas' meticulous planning for how to kidnap women and children and brutally take over homes. "The cruelty was supposed to be as graphic as possible because that's how you show your superiority," expert says.

 

By Itay Ilnai and Filipp Piatov

 

Israel Hayom

Jun 28, 2024 

 

The captured Hamas documents with battle orders

 

Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, known as "Abu Saheeb," a senior Hamas official and commander of the Gaza Brigade, held a secret meeting with his battalion commanders on October 6, hours before the surprise attack on Israel. He personally handed them a printed page bearing the logo of Hamas' military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

"With faith in crushing victory, the leadership of the brigades has approved the start of the major military operation 'Al-Aqsa Flood'," Abu Saheeb declared at the top of the page. "Place your faith and trust in Allah, rely on Him and fight bravely, act with a clear conscience, and let the cries of 'Allahu Akbar' be the crowning glory."

The document, captured by the IDF during the ground operation in Gaza and revealed here for the first time in a joint article by Israel Hayom and the German newspaper Bild, outlines the preparations required for the incursion into Israel: "Ensure that no operative leaves the assembly point; ensure that there is no use of mobile phones under any circumstances; conduct battalion meetings underground; forces will receive an explanation (only) in the last two hours."

Abu Saheeb emphasizes one of the brigade's main objectives: "Ensure that there is a live broadcast of the assault and takeover of the outposts and kibbutzim. The brigade's information (department) has permission to upload the footage (to the internet). You may take flags of Arab and Islamic countries with you to hoist them atop the outposts and kibbutzim."

The order concludes by summarizing the main goal of the October 7 operation: "Take a large number of soldiers prisoner in the first moments (of the fighting) and send them into the Gaza Strip (emphasis in original). Signed: Your brother, the jihad fighter, Abu Saheeb al-Haddad, commander of the Gaza Brigade."

While Abu Saheeb's military order does not explicitly instruct his men to kidnap and murder civilians or commit atrocities such as beheadings and sexual crimes, such horrors occurred on a wide scale during that catastrophic day in all areas of the Gaza border communities. "These acts were not committed by one person or in one place alone," says a police source, relying on forensic evidence, testimonies, interrogations of terrorists, and hundreds of hours of video footage. "You see these atrocities everywhere during that day."

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza and architect of the surprise attack, claimed in communications with his people during the war that "things got out of control." He stated, "People got carried away, and it shouldn't have happened." An official Hamas document from January also claimed that the October 7 attack was aimed only at military sites to capture soldiers and release prisoners in exchange. "The religion of Islam forbids intentional harm to women, children, and the elderly," it stated. "Hamas, as a disciplined movement, adheres to these rules."

However, the evidence suggests that Hamas is indeed a disciplined movement. The Gaza Brigade's operation order is just one component of a complex, extensive, and sophisticated system that Hamas efficiently and cunningly wove in preparation for its murderous attack. Additional documents captured during the maneuver in Gaza – some of which are revealed here for the first time – along with conversations with survivors from the Gaza area kibbutzim, sources involved in interrogating terrorists, and researchers of Palestinian society, give for the first time the full scope of this system and underscores the lengths to which it was an engineered, planned, and precise operation that is very unlikely to have "gotten out of control."

Moreover, the October 7 massacre was not only explicitly directed at Israeli civilians but was deliberately carried out by Gazan civilians who were an inherent part of the grand plan Hamas had devised. According to academic researchers in Germany and Israel, parts of this plan are reminiscent of practices used by the Nazis to exterminate European Jews, such as the use of Einsatzgruppen, the SS "operational units" that advanced in the wake of the German army's invasion of Eastern Europe and participated in the planned and systematic extermination of Jews.

"Hamas is not just a terror army, but also an organization that holds a modern ideology for the extermination of Jews," says Prof. Michael Wolffsohn from the Federal Army University in Munich, one of the world's leading researchers on the analysis of German-Israeli relations. According to him, students in Europe and the U.S. who express solidarity with Hamas "are actually expressing solidarity with the 'values' of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen."

Chilling efficiency

At two-thirty in the morning, October 8, under the protection of Maglan and Duvdevan elite IDF commandos, Gila Mizrahi emerged from the safe room, having being trapped in it for 20 consecutive hours. During this long time, her beautiful home in Kfar Aza, where she had lived for more than 40 years, became a military outpost for terrorists. "Everything in the house was broken and destroyed," she recalls this week the moments of leaving the safe room. "But before I left the house, I saw out of the corner of my eye, amid all the chaos, the cookie jars I had left on the kitchen counter. They were intact and empty. My youngest son was supposed to have a birthday that Saturday, and I had prepared the date cookies he loves. The terrorists, who were in our house for hours, apparently enjoyed them very much."

A few hours earlier, under a barrage of missiles and rockets, dozens of Nukhba terrorists, Hamas's elite unit, invaded Kfar Aza. They wore olive uniforms, were armed from head to toe, quickly breached the border fence and entered Kfar Aza on pickup trucks. Photojournalist Roi Idan, a resident of the kibbutz, even managed to photograph two terrorists making their way towards him, hanging on paragliders. Idan was murdered along with his wife, Smadar. Their daughter, Avigail, was kidnapped and celebrated her fourth birthday in Gaza. She was released in the first hostage deal.

The Nukhba forces in Kfar Aza were not only well-trained but also equipped with maps, accurate intelligence, and orderly commands. This was also the case with the other Nukhba forces, which simultaneously overtook the military bases in the sector, including the nearby Nahal Oz outpost, which was completely captured.

The Nukhba force that entered Kfar Aza operated with chilling efficiency. Dozens of terrorists, who knew exactly where the armory and the private home of the kibbutz's security coordinator, Shahar Avian, were located, conducted a brief battle against the local standby squad, which was numerically inferior, and eliminated seven out of its 14 members. From that moment on, they controlled the kibbutz without challenge. They had plenty of time to eat Gila Mizrahi's date cookies. "Around eight in the morning, we started hearing automatic weapon fire and shouts in Arabic around the house," says Yossi, Gila's husband. "The first thing I did was send a message to the security coordinator, Shahar Aviani. Only after that did I realize that at this stage he had already been murdered."

After hearing the gunshots, Yossi and Gila, both 73 – he's a landscape architect and she managed Kfar Aza's "mini-mall" for years – locked themselves in the safe room along with one of their granddaughters and her partner. At one point, the four heard terrorists entering the house and wandering through the different rooms, just beyond the door. "They tried to open the safe room, but fortunately the handle is tricky and you need to know how to operate it," Yossi recounts. "They didn't succeed, and one of them asked in a heavy Arabic accent, 'Is anyone there?' We, for our part, huddled in the corner and tried to keep quiet." Yossi even held a kitchen knife in his hand. "Not that it would have helped me with anything, but that's what I had," he says.

From inside the safe room, the Mizrahi family could hear Hamas terrorists breaking all the windows in the house and piling up the living room furniture to serve as a military position. The special treatment given to the Mizrahi family's house, located at the southern end of Kfar Aza, was not accidental: It faces the kibbutz's perimeter fence, not far from the access road and the entrance gate to the community. The terrorists used this house as an outpost to prevent IDF forces from approaching the kibbutz and recapturing it. Later, a Toyota pickup truck loaded with many weapons would be found on the lawn in the yard. The terrorists apparently failed to bring all the extensive equipment into the fortified house.

The Mizrahi family's house was not the only one carefully chosen and converted into a military position. At one o'clock in the afternoon of October 7, when a small force led by the Maglan commander finally arrived at Kfar Aza, the settlement's gate had already become a killing zone controlled by Hamas terrorists, who had positioned machine guns and RPG launchers on the roofs of nearby houses. Along the perimeter fence, numerous explosive devices had been placed in advance. "Our goal was just to kill, not to kidnap," a captured Nukhba terrorist said in his Shin Bet interrogation. "To kill women and children too."

 

 

Israeli soldiers remove bodies in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Oct. 10, 2023.

 

According to IDF documents, in the prolonged time at their disposal, the terrorists also managed to boobytrap some of the houses inside the kibbutz, leaving weapons outside to tempt and lure soldiers inside. In some houses, even the windows were booby-trapped, assuming soldiers would try to enter through them. The terrorists even placed grenades without pins under bodies, both of dead terrorists and Israeli casualties. In several cases, terrorists pretended to be dead, to ambush IDF soldiers after they passed them. These methods were also common in other places captured by Hamas that day.

The second wave

The Shin Bet and Military Intelligence Directorate define the Nukhba terrorists, hundreds of whom first stormed the Gaza border communities and bases, as the "first wave" of the attack, the one that paved the way for the waves that followed. Shortly after the first wave attack began, an announcement started to be heard in Gaza's mosques: From the powerful loudspeakers came the voice of Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas's military wing, calling on anyone who could take a rifle, even a knife or an axe, to join the raid into Israel.

Similar instructions were given simultaneously through Hamas' media outlets in the Gaza Strip and passed by word of mouth. These incitement calls, a move undoubtedly carefully planned in advance by Hamas, were intended to flood the Gaza border communities with as many vengeful and hate-filled Gaza residents as possible, who would enter Israel under the cover of the breaches provided by the first wave of the Nukhba force. If you will, a reserve mobilization.

Hundreds of those who quickly responded to these calls were armed Hamas members not affiliated with the Nukhba forces, or members of other terrorist organizations who were not privy to the attack plans. The people of the "second wave" may not have all trained for the attack and were not equipped with orderly commands, but somehow they knew exactly what to do.

For example, in footage published on social media, filmed by a GoPro camera carried by a Hamas terrorist, you can see the house of the Mizrahi family in Kfar Aza, and the huge Brachychiton tree planted in their yard. In the video, about ten terrorists surround the house, all dressed in civilian clothes (unlike the Nukhba men who wore olive uniforms, some of them IDF uniforms), which doesn mean they were not equipped with Kalashnikov rifles and combat vests.

In the video, you can see how these terrorists wander around the Mizrahi family's house and shout "Allahu Akbar," and when a red alert siren is heard, they hide behind the wide trunk of the tree. Other than that, no one interferes with their actions. One can get the impression that these terrorists are less professional and orderly than the Nukhba men, but within the comfortable envelope in which they operated, there was no one to prevent them from turning the Mizrahi family's house into their temporary base. From this base, they went on an indiscriminate killing spree.

"Throughout the day we heard them talking for hours, leaving the house and coming back," says Gila Mizrahi. "In hindsight, we know that during this time, in the row of houses behind us, they entered every house and murdered the residents – adults and children. If there's any luck, it's that the apartments in Kfar Aza share a common wall, and apparently the terrorists didn't understand that each house actually consists of two separate apartments. In each building in the row, they only entered one apartment and didn't bother to enter the adjacent one. That's how some of the people were saved: One family was murdered, one family wasn't. Every time they killed someone, it sounded like it made them feel really good. It was very hard to sit in the safe room and hear all this happening around us."

At the end of the conversation, Yossi sends us a two-minute video clip, filmed immediately after the IDF's recapture of Kfar Aza. You can see the house's kitchen riddled with bullets, and the living room completely overturned. In the front yard, the body of a terrorist in military uniform, perhaps a Nukhba man, still lies. On the back porch of the house, under the shade of the huge tree, lies a pile of additional bodies. On the nearby wall, someone sprayed in red spray paint "7 dead terrorists." All these dead terrorists are dressed in civilian clothes. Most of them are wearing sandals.

Kidnapping organized down to a tee

Those who took over the southern neighborhood in Kfar Aza, that of the Mizrahi couple, didn't waste time on kidnapping civilians. But in the "Young Neighborhood," which is closer to the Gaza border, the terrorists acted systematically to kidnap as many as possible. They entered each and every one of the 16 houses there. In total, they murdered three residents and kidnapped seven others. Only four of the neighborhood's residents who were at home that day were spared after managing to lock themselves in the safe room. "Those who resisted them were murdered, and those who didn't resist – were kidnapped," one of them recounted.

In a nearby town, the terrorists tried to use a slightly different method to kidnap the residents. On one of the terrorists' bodies, a note was found, on which a surrender order was written in Hebrew by hand: "All residents of the Kibbutz must surrender themselves as prisoners to the al-Qassam Brigades."

It seems that when it comes to kidnappings, Hamas was perfectly organized. Luis Har, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak and released in a military operation in Rafah, described in testimony given in Nadav Peri's podcast about his "kidnapping chain": One group of terrorists pulled him out of the house, a second drove him across the border fence, a third led him through the intricate tunnel system beneath Gaza, and another led him from the tunnel entrance to a hideout, where he was held captive along with his relatives – another man, two women, and a teenage girl.

The 70-year-old Har said that each of the units in his "kidnapping chain" was composed of different people, who acted in full cooperation and knew exactly what to do. Hamas, as mentioned, is a disciplined movement.

Popular mass mobilization

The conquest of the Gaza border communities was a move long planned by the Hamas leadership. Another shocking handwritten document, also captured during the IDF ground maneuver in the Gaza Strip, details the full scope of "Al-Aqsa Flood." According to the document, Hamas' original goal was to take control of 221 settlements in the south, including the cities of Netivot, Ofakim, and Sderot, and expel the "settlers" from them. These were supposed to flee the using their own cars, with "priority to (expelling) women and children, and taking men aged 17-50 as hostages." The Hamas leadership estimated that Israel would respond forcefully to the attack, "not only with strikes but also with an atomic bomb." According to the document, they were prepared to absorb even that.

The conquest operation was planned to be accompanied by an international media and legal effort, branded as "Returning Home." Gaza civilians also had a role in the plan. "For extra security, a popular mass mobilization should be carried out for a symbolic return to villages and their re-conquest," it stated. "This war is a war of life and death." This grandiose plan didn't ultimately materialize. But even during October 7, Hamas carried out a "popular mass mobilization."

The "first wave" and "second wave" of armed individuals were not the only forces that invaded Israeli territory. They were joined by an additional wave, a third, of what is called in the Israeli intelligence community "looters" or "mob." These were civilians, not necessarily armed with firearms, who simply took advantage of the opportunity presented to them. "There were civilians who got the understanding — and someone took care to create this understanding – that the fence had fallen," says a military source. "As a result, so many civilians entered Israel, some of whom say in interrogations that they just wanted to infiltrate Israel to look for work. There was a mixed crowd of all types of people there, including 12-year-old children." According to testimonies obtained by Israel Hayom and Bild, Gazan women also participated in the attack.

In police interrogations of some of the "mob" caught in Israeli territory, they said that the calls in the mosques and the rumor about the breached border fence were the catalyst that caused them to storm the Gaza border communities. "There are quite a few people who say in interrogations, 'We heard Mohammed Deif in the mosque, we took a knife, and our goal was to slaughter Jews,'" a police source said.

Some of the looters "settled" for slaughtering Jews, while others kidnapped people as if finding great spoil. According to a source familiar with the information, a kind of "price list" developed in real-time around the issue of Israeli hostages, with Hamas offering money to anyone who had an Israeli hostage. "In one case, someone holding a hostage was offered an apartment in exchange," says the same source.

Singing in Arabic

The "first wave" and "second wave" of armed individuals were not the only forces that invaded Israeli territory. They were joined by an additional wave, a third, of what is called in the Israeli intelligence community "looters" or "mob." These were civilians, not necessarily armed with firearms, who simply took advantage of the opportunity presented to them. "There were civilians who got the understanding - and someone took care to create this understanding - that the fence had fallen," says a military source. "As a result, so many civilians entered Israel, some of whom say in interrogations that they just wanted to infiltrate Israel to look for work. There was a mixed crowd of all types of people there, including 12-year-old children." According to testimonies obtained by Israel Hayom and Bild, Gazan women also participated in the attack.

In police interrogations of some of the "mob" caught in Israeli territory, they said that the calls in the mosques and the rumor about the breached border fence were the catalyst that caused them to storm the Gaza envelope. "There are quite a few people who say in interrogations 'we heard Mohammed Deif in the mosque, we took a knife, and our goal was to slaughter Jews'," says a police source.

Some of the looters "settled" for slaughtering Jews, while others kidnapped people as if finding great spoil. According to a source familiar with the information, a kind of "price list" developed in real-time around the issue of Israeli hostages, with Hamas offering money to anyone who had an Israeli hostage. "In one case, someone holding a hostage was offered an apartment in exchange," says the same source.

The different waves that crashed with force on the Gaza envelope mixed with each other and operated in parallel. "These were 'breathing' waves," as a military source defines it. From testimonies and videos, one can get the impression that everyone who entered Israel from the Gaza Strip that day, regardless of which wave they were in, acted in synchronization that seemed to be dictated in advance. One of the places where this synchronization can be closely examined is Kibbutz Nir Oz.

IDF forces arrived at Nir Oz only in the afternoon hours of October 7 and found it almost completely empty of terrorists. In the many hours that passed until then, the kibbutz became completely exposed and Palestinians from Gaza did as they pleased. So much so, that a Palestinian journalist entered the kibbutz with a camera crew and broadcast live on television. In total, 77 people were kidnapped from Nir Oz, and 40 were murdered – one out of every three residents who were in the kibbutz that Saturday.

Hamas' method worked well in Nir Oz. The first to arrive were the Nukhba men dressed in olive uniforms. They breached the gate at exactly 6:35 AM, entered on about ten Toyota pickup trucks, dispersed throughout the kibbutz according to orders received in advance, and quickly neutralized the standby squad. On the body of the only terrorist found in the kibbutz was a map dividing Nir Oz into different sectors. Attached to the map was one operational instruction: "Kidnap everyone you can. If there's resistance – kill."

Irit Lahav, a 57-year-old resident of Nir Oz, was born and raised in the kibbutz. In her youth, she went on a long trip abroad, including long stays in India, Japan, and Brazil, and five years ago returned to live in Nir Oz, in the new expansion neighborhood. When the invasion began, Lahav locked herself in the house's safe room along with her daughter and their dog. "I had to clean and organize," says Lahav, but in the pictures she shows us on her phone, one can see the total chaos left behind by the terrorists and looters on October 7.

"It was clear from the messages running in the kibbutz that the terrorists were going from house to house, and that at some point they would reach us too," Lahav continues. "We started thinking about how we would lock ourselves in. The problem is that the whole body is shaking, and it's very hard to think clearly." With a little instruction she received on the phone from her brother, and a lot of resourcefulness, Lahav turned for a moment into MacGyver: she took the rod of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, tied it with a thin leather cord to an oar that happened to be in the safe room, and fitted the improvised lock on the door handle. "I knew our lives depended on this thing," she says.

An hour and a half after completing the construction of the lock, someone entered her house. "It sounded like seven or eight men," she recounts. "They were here for 20 minutes, banging on the safe room door and shouting. At this stage, there's no fear anymore, there's acceptance of death. The shaking stops, the body is limp, you know these are the last moments. My daughter and I said goodbye words to each other and 'I love you'. Until the terrorists gave up and went to the neighbors' house. The lock I built worked."

Those who weren't resourceful that day in Nir Oz didn't survive. They were kidnapped or murdered. Out of 135 houses in the kibbutz, only five weren't entered by terrorists. If you didn't manage to lock the safe room door, your fate was bitter. "They came to me, and came back again and again, about every hour," Lahav recounts. The first people who entered her house still tried to open the safe room door by force, those who came after barely bothered. They settled for looting. "Each time someone else came to see what else they could steal," says Lahav. "Around four in the afternoon we heard two teenagers entering the house. They were inside for 45 minutes. They were the last to 'visit' us."

A Gazan woman entered one of Lahav's neighbors' houses. "The family, who was locked in the safe room, heard her turn on the TV, exit Netflix, put on some program in Arabic, and for four hours prepare food and sing in Arabic."

The Gazans who entered the houses in Nir Oz barely left any property behind. "They took everything," says Lahav. "Shoes, sandals, bicycles, children's toy cars, mobility scooters, scooters, tractors, agricultural machinery, electrical appliances – microwave, TV, mixer. All the computers, phones, wallets. They even took my kettle, spoons, and knives."

Some of the "mob" in Nir Oz also engaged in kidnapping. According to testimonies of female hostages from the kibbutz who returned from Gaza, some were taken out of the house by unarmed people, driven to the border by an armed person in civilian clothes, and from there taken further. "In my opinion, the trend was first to kidnap, then to loot, and finally – to burn," says Lahav. "The pyromaniacs didn't reach my neighborhood, but 60% of the houses in Nir Oz were set on fire. They simply cut the gas pipe in the kitchen and lit it."

According to Lahav, "This is probably a gimmick they thought of on the spot, because some of the terrorists came to Nir Oz with fuel containers, and people reported hearing them pouring something in the house before it was set on fire. In one of my rounds in the kibbutz, I even saw a pile of tires, tied with a rope. At first, I didn't understand why they were there. Only later did it dawn on me – they dragged the tires with them from Gaza to set the houses on fire." In other words: The Gazan mob knew, from within, that they should set the kibbutz houses on fire and burn them down. The only question was what was the most efficient way to do it.

Murderous and raping mob 

Sources involved in interrogating Palestinians caught in Israeli territory say that the wave of "looters" didn't settle for just kidnapping, stealing, and burning. Some committed the most horrific atrocities.

In one of the kibbutzim in the Gaza area we visited, for example, several beheaded bodies were found, and at least one woman was raped. Two terrorists caught by the Shin Bet, a father and son, even confessed to this rape in their interrogation.

Among the acts attributed to the wave of "looters" are additional sex crimes. The "Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel" relied on open publications on the subject, and with the help of additional testimonies they collected, compiled the report "Silent Cry," which was published in February. While Hamas vehemently denies that sex crimes occurred intentionally and initiated during October 7, according to the report, the attack included "brutal sexual abuse, carried out systematically and intentionally against Israeli citizens."

This determination is based, among other things, on the fact that recurring patterns of sex crimes appeared both at the Nova music festival, in the kibbutzim, and in IDF bases. Due to the sensitivity of the matters, we won't quote the report in full, but we'll note that a large part of the bodies of sex crime victims were found tied and bound, and in some cases, bodies were found with their genitals mutilated.

"Not in a Vacuum" 

Where does the pure evil come from, which allowed Gaza residents – terrorists and civilians – to commit such horrific crimes against innocent people? Here too, the answer is part of Hamas' grand plan, which had been ongoing for years in preparation for the attack. "October 7 didn't occur in a vacuum," as Dr. Ido Zelkovitz, a researcher and the Chaikin Chair for Geostrategy at the University of Haifa and head of the Middle Eastern Studies program at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, puts it. "This was an orderly work plan, the result of Hamas' poison machine, which built this event over a long time. This was accompanied by a long mental preparation, which allowed people to commit the atrocities they committed. The massacre is an unequivocal product of Hamas' religious preaching system in the Gaza Strip over the years.

"Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007, and in the period that has passed since then, it has exclusively controlled the media, the education system, the preaching networks in mosques, etc.," Zelkovitz continues. "The younger generation in Gaza has grown up all their lives under a regime that promotes ideas that present the Jew in a dehumanized way, as an inferior creature who deceived the Palestinians and stole their land, in an illegitimate and illegal manner. When you take all this incitement that people were exposed to for years, not only informally but as raw material in the education system, and add to it the fact that most of the Gazan public are refugees, who just by crossing the border feel an exaltation of returning to their lands – you get a very strong cocktail. This thing was aggressively fueled for years and exploded on October 7."

The main component in this poison cocktail, according to Dr. Zelkovitz, is religious fundamentalism. "In Hamas, they learned religious rulings that allow them to harm any Jew, since even a child and an elderly person were or will be soldiers," he says. "Hamas commanders gave orders on October 7, while quoting verses from the Quran and highlighting cases from Islamic history where famous commanders beheaded and dismembered during battle."

Zelkovitz gives as an example a note whose contents were previously published by the IDF spokesperson and found in the possession of a dead terrorist. "Know that the enemy is a disease that has no cure, except for beheading and tearing out hearts and livers," it stated. In a conversation that an official Israeli source had with Israel Hayom and Bild, it was reported that in at least one case of an Israeli casualty, the head was severed and even taken into the Gaza Strip, where it was held as a bargaining chip by Hamas. The body parts were eventually located during the ground operation and returned for burial in Israel.

"When you talk about killing and abusing Jews as a commandment that promises you reward in the afterlife, it has a significant impact," explains Dr. Zelkovitz. "Even an ordinary Gazan citizen who enters Israel doesn't feel that he's acting for something material, but performing these actions – murder, rape, looting – for the sake of a religious war. It's no coincidence that in the terrorists' GoPro videos, you can see them singing songs of praise and glory to the Prophet Muhammad and Allah, and not talking about liberating Palestine. The idea of a religious struggle is what accompanies them, not the idea of national liberation. This allows you to commit atrocities out of a sense of mission and belief."

The connection between religious belief and the action of Hamas forces on the ground is expressed in another document captured from a Nukhba terrorist who infiltrated Israel on October 7. It's a combat page for "morale boosting" to be carried in the vest pocket, a long table aimed at encouraging the fighters of Hamas' military wing and lifting their spirits, using religious and Islamic motifs. The table includes various verses from the Quran alongside quotes from Muslim commanders and preachers, which are to be recited before, during, and after battle, and even in case of injury.

Thus, for example, a wounded terrorist is supposed to pull out the table from his vest pocket and mumble "Do not let your hands slacken from pursuing the infidels, and even if you are wounded, behold their wounds hurt as much as yours." Another quote calls: "O jihad fighters, the qualities of men are revealed in battlefields and not on speaking platforms." The IDF Military Intelligence Directorate claims that the document shows that in Hamas' military wing, faith is an integral part of the fighting.

The Nazis may not have been religious fundamentalists, but their fanatical ideology allowed German soldiers and civilians to commit genocide against European Jews. According to academic experts, there are indeed parallel lines between Nazi methods and those of Hamas. "October 7 was part of Hamas' attempt to eliminate the Jewish population in Israel by killing as many people as possible and expelling others," says historian Prof. Danny Orbach from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Both in the case of Hamas and in the case of the Nazis, there was an 'attempt at mass extermination', but the logic behind the extermination mechanism was different. While the Nazis wanted to eliminate the Jews as quickly and efficiently as possible, Hamas knew it couldn't kill all the Jews of Israel, only those who would be under its control during the invasion hours."

 

Gaza civilians joining the terrorist attack on Nir Oz

 

Orbach refers to the huge quantities of video material that Hamas produced during the massacre and uploaded to the internet, the result of a clear strategy dictated in advance. "Hamas' goal was not only to murder people, but to demonstrate the dominance of one group over another through torture and mutilation," he says. "Therefore, the cruelty had to be as graphic as possible, because that's how you show your superiority in this culture." According to him, this is exactly the core of Hamas' ideology. "Hamas believes that Israel is an artificial state. It believes that we will simply disappear if our security is shaken, that Israel will disintegrate.

"This is actually very similar to the Nazi way of thinking," Orbach continues, "Hamas sees all Jewish presence in 'Palestine' as a kind of pollution. And if you think something is pollution, you want to clean it with fire."