By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2024-12-30 21:30:05 | Updated at 2025-01-02 17:21:40
2 days ago
Hamas terrorists were able to watch their Israeli victims through hacked security cameras and collected troves of intel as part of a seven-year operation before the Oct. 7 massacre, according to a bombshell report in Israeli media.
Documents seized from Hamas operatives showed that the spying on the kibbutzim went on for at least seven years before the attack — revealing a complex operation by a sophisticated enemy, local Channel 12 reports.
Among the intel that Hamas obtained were details about an Israeli kindergarten and a health clinic, IP addresses and serial numbers of all the security cameras for the communities where the worst atrocities occurred and even the phone numbers of several security guards working at the border, according to the report.
Shalom Ben Hanan, a former top official with Israeli spy agency Shen Bet, told Channel 12 that it was shocking to see just how much information Hamas had been able to gather, as Israeli officials repeatedly pegged the group as a minor threat when compared to Iran and its other terror proxies.
“We see a very, very accurate and very detailed intelligence from an army… that collects intelligence on its targets for attack and is preparing files for attack,” Hanan said of the Hamas files.
Eerie footage aired during the report showed various surveillance shots of the communities along the border that Hamas terrorists were able to monitor and use for their eventual attack.
Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people — mostly civilians, including women and children — and kidnapped another 251 in the 2023 terrorist attack.
Israeli officials surmised Hamas gained access to the cameras because civilians were freely passing around the access codes to the devices on WhatsApp and Telegram, which made them prime targets for hackers.
The terror group was also able to infiltrate the emails of security officials, which gave them hints on where the border was the weakest — helping them to plan the their attack on the lightly guarded region, according to the report.
One email, which Hamas had intercepted in 2023, showed messages from IDF forces requesting security fencing, according to the outlet.
Hamas was even able to track the movements of top security officials stationed at several border communities, including Sdot Negev Regional Council’s Chief Tamir Idan, his chief of staff Rafi Babian, and Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council chair Ofir Libstein, the latter of whom was killed on Oct. 7.
Former Eshkol Regional Council head Gadi Yarkoni said he had also been “marked” as a target, but fortunately for him, Hamas failed to realize he had moved.
“Apparently they had looked into this a long time ago or they didn’t have new information, because I moved departments three years before [Oct. 7], and they came to my old home,” he told Channel 12.
Yarkoni slammed the Israeli Defense Forces for failing to catch Hamas’ spying efforts and not warning him and other officials ahead of time.
“They didn’t give me any clue of any of this,” he told the outlet. “I’d be surprised if the [military] didn’t know about it.”
Amnon Ziv, the police chief in Ashkelon, just north of Gaza, said it was clear Hamas was compiling a hit list against security forces along the border ever since he received a direct threat from the terrorists in 2022.
“Two years ago, I myself received a video from Hamas about me with various clues,” Ziv told the outlet.
“They downloaded a picture of me from Facebook, and at the end of the 10-second video, it also said ‘We will get to you.'”
The IDF has yet to respond to the local report.
It remains unclear exactly how Hamas managed to obtain all the intel on Israel border communities, but previous reports from Israeli media suggested the terror group had hackers who spent years trying to work their way into the IDF security camera system.
Hamas allegedly gained access to dozens of civilian and private cameras by exploiting old passwords on the security devices, giving them a clear view of several border communities, Israel Hayom reported earlier this year.
The reach of the terror group’s breach was not made entirely clear until Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip and uncovered troves of documents detailing Hamas’s intelligence and planning.
“The perception in Israel was that Hamas does not have serious intelligence agencies and that at most they can ‘pick up binoculars’ and observe from afar, and that terrorist organizations are not Russia or China,” Nathaniel Palmer, a senior lecturer in the Middle East Studies department at Bar-Ilan University, told Israel Hayom.
While the IDF has conducted several investigations into Oct. 7 and the failings that allowed Hamas terrorists to launch the surprise attack, Jerusalem has repeatedly refused to appoint an independent commission to probe the matter.
Several of Israel’s top security leaders and ministers have resigned over their handling of the terror attack and its aftermath, but the buck has stopped short of reaching embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political allies.
Oct. 7 remains one of Israel’s biggest security failures, with reports since the attack indicating that the warning signs of a massive Hamas assault were always present, and that officials were warned about the possibility ahead of time.
