Khaberni - An Israeli military investigation revealed that the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has gathered accurate intelligence information about the Israeli military and its soldiers over many years.
The reports indicate that military investigations have uncovered that Hamas spent years gathering sensitive intelligence information about Israeli military bases and equipment, particularly tanks and their operations, through soldiers' activities on social media, allowing the movement to disable tanks and raid military bases during their attack on October 7, 2023, in southern Israel.
The Israeli Army Radio reported that an intelligence unit associated with Hamas built a detailed database over several years by compiling thousands of social media posts by soldiers, including photos and videos, with a particular focus on the "Merkava Mark 4" tank, the most advanced armored vehicle in the Israeli army's arsenal.
According to the report published by "The Times of Israel," Hamas learned about a hidden kill switch in the tank that disables the vehicle and renders it unusable, which they used during their attacks on Israeli military bases along the Gaza border on October 7, particularly during their attack on Nahal Oz base, where 53 soldiers were killed and 10 others were captured.
The full extent of the group's understanding of Israeli military bases and equipment was not revealed to the army until early 2024, when soldiers discovered a tunnel complex containing intelligence data on military sites, vehicles, and units, largely gathered through surveillance of social media accounts of about 100,000 Israeli soldiers, according to the report.
According to the report, intelligence units belonging to Hamas used the facility as the headquarters of a precise intelligence and training program that lasted for years, relying heavily on open-source information leaked by soldiers online.
The facility was also used as an underground training base for the movement's elite force, which established a unit specially trained to operate Israeli military tanks using intelligence gathered through social media.
Initially, it was assumed that Hamas's special tank unit would capture the tanks and push them into Gaza to use against the Israeli military in battle, but the elements failed to do so on the day of the attacks and succeeded only in disabling the tanks, according to the report.
However, the group's success in disrupting the tanks greatly puzzled Israeli military leaders at the time, as they were uncertain about how Hamas fighters discovered the hidden kill switch in the Merkava Mark 4 tank until the army found the intelligence unit's database.
The intelligence unit, reportedly consisting of about 2,500 members, created tens of thousands of fake social media accounts to follow hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers in the hope that the soldiers would post sensitive and secret information about their equipment and bases.
Over five years starting in 2018, Hamas collected data and studied it, producing intelligence reports that the army investigations said rival the army's own operation files.
The unit also managed to infiltrate internal "WhatsApp" groups of various Israeli military units by creating fake profiles, using them to track individual soldiers from the moment of their enlistment up to their promotion to officers and even high-ranking leaders.
According to the military report, the military intelligence unit of Hamas issued daily reports about the routine activity of the Israeli military, detailing the location of each military company, location of each Iron Dome battery, and whether the army had made changes to troop deployments or quietly moved troops between sectors.
It was mentioned that the group analyzed thousands of data points in real time from social networks and built accurate models of Israeli military bases and equipment in virtual reality simulators, which were used to train elite agents.
Army Radio quoted an officer saying, "The army was aware of some training models used by Hamas, but he said 'We never imagined their accuracy'."
Another officer told the agency, "Hamas knew the bases better than me, having served there for many years."
A document found in Gaza detailed the precise design of the base, including shelters, barracks, generator rooms, communication antennas, surveillance cameras, and the operations room. Hamas knew where the leaders slept, the effectiveness of the shelters against rockets, the number of soldiers armed, and the type of these weapons.
Perhaps the attack on Nahal Oz, located only 850 meters from the border with the Gaza Strip, was the most successful attack carried out by the movement in their attack on October 7, 2023.
The base, which housed 162 soldiers, 90 of them armed, served as a military site for combat soldiers due to its proximity to Gaza, as well as being the command center for Combat Intelligence Collection Unit 414 of the Border Protection Corps, whose members operated surveillance cameras looking towards the sector.
In March, "The Times of Israel" reported that Israeli army investigations into the attack led by Hamas on Nahal Oz base found that the group knew the number of forces deployed at the base on any given date, as well as the best time to attack, how long it would take for the army to send reserve forces to the base, and the best routes to reach the base.
