From the looted materials seized, it appears that Hamas planned in advance to act brutally against Jews, to kidnap civilians and harm them

From documents located by IDF forces in the Gaza Strip and found in the possession of Hamas operatives, who participated in the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 in the area surrounding Gaza ("Operation Flood Al-Aqsa" according to Hamas), it appears that the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip directed the organization's operatives to act brutally against Jews, soldiers and civilians alike, while justifying these actions as actions done in the name of Islam.

The documents indicate that the attack was planned to deliberately harm civilians. 

The training for it included meticulous preparations for attacking security rooms, taking hostages, stripping them and threatening to kill them while bargaining. The captured documentation indicates a deep anti-Semitic perception accompanied by a radical Islamic ideology, which mainly characterizes extremist Islamic organizations, such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

The documents found in Gaza are a clear and unequivocal reference to the fact that, in stark contrast to the claims made by senior Hamas officials after the terrorist attack that the operation was against soldiers only, the attack was aimed in advance against the civilian settlements in the Gaza Envelope and their residents.

For example, Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, responded to a question about Hamas killing many civilians and taking many hostages, saying that there are false Israeli narratives about the deaths of civilians. 

According to him, several video clips prove that Hamas operatives cared about Israeli children. According to him, there is also Israeli evidence that the one who killed Israeli civilians was their army which shelled the houses around, killing dozens of civilians, and the extent of the destruction proves that it was at the hands of Israel. 

As for the hostage taking, he said that when the Israeli army collapsed, chaos ensued. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians and fighters from other organizations entered Israeli territory and captured many Israelis (Frontline website, October 27, 2023).

Ghazi Hamed, a member of the political bureau of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, said in this context that the objectives of the operation were purely military objectives, to destroy the Gaza Division and kidnap soldiers in order to free the Palestinian prisoners in the prisons and finish the prisoner case, and that Muhammad Al-Chief ordered not to harm in children, women and the elderly. 

He emphasized that the Hamas movement had no intention of taking civilians, but with the opening of the security fence, Palestinian citizens from the Gaza Strip, from Beit Hanun, Jabaliya and Beit Lahia, which are adjacent to the fence, entered the Israeli settlements, and some of them took Israeli citizens to replace them with their captive relatives (the Lebanese website Unews, December 7, 2023).

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