Among the documents recovered from Hamas terrorists who carried out the terror attack on October 7 was a thorough map of an Israeli military base which could only have been drawn using “inside knowledge” – almost certainly from a Hamas spy, the Guardian reported on Tuesday, citing an Israeli intelligence source.
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The report noted that the map was “arguably more detailed than would have been required by the IDF itself,” suggesting it was specially drawn for the assault on the base.
“The detail and sheer scale of the information found have led insiders to conclude that Hamas engaged in ‘years of planning’ – an effort that the IDF and other Israeli intelligence agencies simply failed to take seriously as a threat,” the report said.
Against the backdrop of increasing attention to testimonies about acts of rape and sexual abuse by terrorists against Israeli men and women during the October 7 terror attack, the Guardian reported that the terrorists carried Arabic-Hebrew dictionaries. One of these dictionaries included instructions on how to order the victims to raise their hands, spread their legs and remove their clothes.
The report also stated that the terrorists carried cell phones with Israeli SIM cards and radios for more than one means of communication. They also had radio transmitters with solar-powered batteries, enabling them to maintain long-term contact within Israel.
At a press conference on Saturday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked about the conspiracy theory suggesting that elements within the defense establishment knew in advance, or were even involved in the Hamas attack. He stated that "there is no conspiracy," despite such claims circulating on social media daily, sometimes echoed by his supporters and close associates.
Netanyahu continued, "There was no conspiracy and there cannot be one. There are questions that need to be answered about what happened, how it happened, etc. But this will be discussed at the end of the war, certainly not now."
On October 20, nearly two weeks after the terror attack, it was reported that a video recorded by one of the terrorists using a GoPro camera showed how deep their intelligence gathering was. The video revealed that upon reaching a certain IDF base, the terrorists precisely identified the secret base among several in the area, then navigated through a forest and arrived exactly at the base's rear gate, which was unmanned. They blew it up, entered and opened fire on the surprised soldiers.
Later, the terrorists are seen searching for the base's bunker, appearing to struggle with navigating the terrain. One of the terrorists pulled out an aerial photograph of the base with marked tags and showed it to the commander, and the group headed for the bunker.
Experts who examined the video said it was a civilian satellite photo relatively easy to obtain, but one still needs to know how to interpret it and cross-reference it with additional sources.