The horrors of October 7 in the border kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip were planned. They did not mature in the heat of the operation, nor the work of lone wolves, but carefully planned by the Ezzedin al-Kassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. This is proven by 'top secret' documents found in a vehicle used by Palestinian commandos and abandoned near Kibbutz Reim, a short distance from the barrier. And broadcast by Israel's Kan public television.
Today, the Israeli air force eliminated in Gaza the person responsible for one of the massacres, the one at Kibbutz Nirim. He is Billal al-Kedra, commander in the Khan Yunes area (south of the Strip) of the 'Nukhba', the elite unit of Hamas.
On the morning of the attack, Hamas' military chief, Mohammed Deif, released a short video in which he explained its aims, claiming among other things that his militiamen had been ordered "not to kill women and children." But at the same time, a few miles away, those same men were indulging in brutal massacres of even the most defenseless.
"The task of your unit is to conquer Kibbutz Alumim with the aim of making as many casualties as possible," reads the document from Hamas' military wing sent to the Israeli broadcaster. "You will also have to take hostages, at a later stage you will receive more orders." Later, the same unit was tasked with "sifting through the kibbutz" to make sure there were no more hotbeds of resistance and to "guard the perimeter" to prevent a possible Israeli counterattack.
So in Alumim Hamas hoped to make as many civilian casualties as possible and take as many hostages as possible. To facilitate the operations - according to the document sent to Kan television - the front-line men had developed a transmission code with their superiors who remained in Gaza in the control rooms. This code, according to the TV, provided for several scenarios in black and white, including: the killing of hostages; hostage-taking; the use of hostages as human shields; the burning of houses, cars and fields. In the context of this general direction, code words were also agreed to be used in the course of the operations. 'Black' meant the killing of hostages, 'Red' meant their capture. Bus' was the use of hostages as human shields. 'Military vehicle' meant the release of hostages, while 'civilian vehicle' meant the number of people captured.
A few days ago, in a television interview, Hamas' No. 2, Sallah al-Aruri, said that Ezzedin al-Kassam's men had concentrated on the conquest of an important military base and that the massacres of civilians had been carried out by masses of disorganized people who had arrived from Gaza after seeing the gaps in the border fence. The documents published by Kan indicate that those massacres had been planned at the drawing board.
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