On 14 October, a week after Black Sabbath, the Nili team – the special command post established by the Shin Bet to settle scores with the planners of the Hamas massacre – found the hiding place of Bilal al-Qudra, commander of the Nukhba force in the South Khan Yunis Battalion, the man who led the murderous raid on the kibbutzim Nir Oz and Nirim.
The crew directed the fighter jet, the plane released the missile, and after a few more seconds, al-Qadra left the world, leaving behind mainly the question: What was the course of education and training that turned a young man born in the second largest city in the Gaza Strip into a terror monster thirsty for Jewish blood?
Assassination of the commander of the raid on Nirim and Nir Oz // Photo: IDF Spokesperson
"When I was a child, how would the residents of Khan Yunis know who was in Hamas?" asks Dor Shahar, who was born 46 years ago in the same city as Ayman Subah. "The Hamasniks would grow a beard and shave their mustaches. I remember how harsh and cruel they were and how afraid we were of them. I went with my mother to the market to buy sweets, and suddenly my head rolled down the street, like a ball. I looked up and saw people hanging from utility poles. They did it deliberately in the city center, where everyone is hanging out, so that they would understand that this is what will happen to those who cooperate with Israel."
Illustration: Niv Tishbi,
Shahar, who came to Israel 23 years ago and converted to Judaism, was 10 years old when Hamas was founded in December 1987 by Imam Ahmed Yassin, a member of the Islamic Mujma'a, the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip. "This was the original sin of the State of Israel, the short-term vision that did not understand what would happen in the future in the Gaza Strip," says Col. (res.) David Hacham, who at the time was head of the Department of Arab Affairs in the Israeli government in the Gaza Strip. "Because while all the other organizations emphasized the word 'Palestine,' Hamas doesn't have it. It is an Islamic resistance movement. Its concept is not limited to the region, but sees the whole space, as it was after the time of the Prophet Muhammad, the great empires, from ocean to ocean."
Armed children at a Hamas concert on the Temple Mount on the occasion of Eid al Fitr,
The wise man, who wrote the book "And the Land Will Be Filled with Hamas," had dozens of hours with Sheikh Yassin and quite a few conversations with the head of Hamas' political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, then chairman of the student union of the Islamic University in Gaza ("He was in his 20s, miserly with words, but you saw how he hated you. Arrows came out of his eyes").
1987: Traffic that began with an accident
Hamas was established in the early days of the first intifada. Hacham believes that Sheikh Yassin saw an opportunity and quickly seized it. The violent clashes began on 8 December 1987, when an Israeli truck driver accidentally hit two taxis not far from Erez Crossing, killing four Palestinian laborers from Jabaliya refugee camp. On the same day, a rumor circulated that the accident was intentional, the fire broke out and could not be extinguished.
Sheikh Yassin hastened to gather his men and stood at the head of the riots. In the Hamas charter, which will be published a few months later, Article 7 makes it clear exactly what our future will be after the fighting ends. "The hour of judgment will come when the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and trees, and then the stones and trees say, 'Oh Muslim, oh 'Abd Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'" Yes, it turns out that nature will also join the elimination efforts.
In 2013, the New York Times looked at Hamas textbooks and found that the Torah and Talmud had been falsified, that Zionism was a racist movement with the goal of expelling all Arabs between the Nile and the Euphrates. It also said that in Pillar of Defense 3 million Zionists entered bomb shelters and begged for a ceasefire
"In the very first weeks of the first intifada, Haim Guri, who was writing for Davar at the time, called and said he wanted to visit me," Hacham says. "I met him with Sheikh Yassin and an hour-and-a-half conversation ensued, in which I served as an interpreter. Guri asked him: 'How do you see the existence of the State of Israel?'
Yassin replied, 'Throughout history there have been kingdoms and empires, and look where they are today. The Roman Empire, the Third Reich, the British Empire?' When he finished listing the empires that collapsed, he had two words: 'This is Israel.' When I translated, I saw that Guri's face was hardened by what he heard. Then Yassin, the bastard, who understood the matter, said to him: 'Don't worry, we Muslims will be ready to recognize you, the Jews, as protégés under Islamic rule.'"
December 2008. Mocking a "kidnapped Israeli soldier" at a Hamas rally in Gaza, photo: AFP
2017: A Document of Principles Without Israel
In 2017, it was Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas' political bureau, who presented a document of principles in Qatar with the borders of Palestine. There were no compromises in the document – the borders were from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, from Rosh Hanikra in the north to Eilat in the south.
"There is a verse in the Quran that says that Allah promised the Israelites this land, it appears in Sura 5, verse 21," says Dr. Nesia Shemer of Bar-Ilan University, an expert on Islamic Sharia and Islam-Judaism relations. "Muslim sheikhs today had to deal with the verse, so they have two methods. One is to say that there is no connection between today's Jews and the Israelites, which is an ancient tribe that has been lost.
"According to them, we are descendants of the Khazars and the Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites, who originated from the Arabian Peninsula. If we go further back and say that the land comes to us from the inheritance left by Abraham, then they answer, 'Don't forget that he had two sons, and Ishmael was the firstborn.' A Jew who wants to live under their rule is invited as a protégé, but since they want to return the refugees, only those who lived here until 1948, and those who arrived later, can remain to return to where they came from."
Dr. Nesiya Shemer, one of the authors of the book "The Head of Hamas": "Sheikh Al-Qaradawi ruled: If the enemy takes Muslims hostage and uses them as human shields, is it permissible to fight knowing that they will be killed? The answer is yes. So it's not so bad if Gazans sacrifice themselves."
Dor Shahar, or by his Gazan name Ayman Subh, remembers how, as a child, he was told at home who the bad guys in the history books were, and what he had to fight for. "My father worked in Israel for 27 years, but every time he heard about a terrorist attack and that people were murdered in Tel Aviv, I heard him say, 'Thank God.' We would go out into the street and people would greet each other like on a holiday day. My grandfather would sit with me as a little boy and say, 'Haifa is my land and the Jews took it. You'll have to pay it back, because that's the family inheritance.'"
Dawn. "As a child, I went with my mother to buy sweets, and suddenly my head rolled in the street, like a ball," Photo: Efrat Eshel
Sheikh Yassin was an elderly man, disabled, suffering from severe vision problems and lung disease, but even in his poor physical condition, he was considered the mastermind behind the murderous organization. Although Fatah was the dominant party in the Gaza Strip in the 90s, Yassin forged in power by spreading religion, extremism, militancy and jihad. His image intensified when he entered and got out of prison, and certainly when he became a "martyr" in March 2004 after he was assassinated in a targeted killing.
2007: Fatah assassination
By this time, Hamas was already a strong and powerful movement with roots and a well-oiled apparatus. In 2007, it took control of the Gaza Strip by force, killing 150 Fatah members. "Cruelty has accompanied Hamas throughout its years," explains Guy Aviad, who wrote the book "The Hamas Lexicon." "In the struggle for control, they threw Fatah members from the 14th floor of a high-rise building. In 2009, an ISIS-style movement called Army of Supporters of Allah was established, challenged them in Rafah and declared: 'We are establishing an emirate.' Hamas recruited its operatives from Izz ad-Din al-Qassam's Rafah Brigade, took over the mosque, killed the movement's leader and operatives – and that's the end of the story. When threatened from within, Hamas has no problem cruelty to its own people. He has not a drop of mercy."
Display of purpose. Hamas terrorists at a military display on the border fence with Israeli territory, photo: Majdi Fathi/TPS
Aviad, 51, who served as an officer and researcher in the IDF's history department for more than 12 years, worked mainly in combat legacies. Hamas attracted his attention as a young man already during the first intifada. He was interested in understanding what organization grew up alongside us and what its motives were.
"There are more than a thousand mosques in Gaza, most of which are controlled by Hamas. In the mosque you can not only see a house of prayer, but also a community center," he explains. "Children come there from an early age, sit in a circle with a cleric, memorize the Koran, and do knowledge competitions with prizes. There's a library, classes, a ping-pong table and even a football league. There they are exposed to poisonous sermons from the best preachers and derive murderous ideology from the age of zero. Hamas, which is also the administration, controls the education system and the content. He has extensive literature, a journal system. Today, the population of the Gaza Strip is 2.2 million people, about half of whom are aged 18 and under. Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip for 16 years. It means that the younger generation, who carried out the October 7 massacre, were born into this regime."
Why? Perhaps because there is no other option in the Gaza Strip, and the educational track is uniform and dictated in advance. In 2012, the website of the Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, published an article about education in kindergartens, where it was said that graduation parties put on plays centered on jihad fighters and their heroism.
A book published in Gaza and found on the body of one of the terrorists who infiltrated Kibbutz Mefalim in the October 7 massacre stated: "We will deal with the significant beauty of death to the warrior of the Holy War and its description as a golden moment. God forbid it should be a source of concern or fear."
"We want them to play the role of warrior and resistance for the sake of Allah," the kindergarten principal explained the educational activities. "We want them to grow up and grow in the noble way of love of resistance, so that commanders and jihad fighters will emerge from them to defend the land of Palestine and Jerusalem."
Hamza, one of the kindergarten children featured in the article, stood in front of the reporter with a wooden rifle in his hands and an al-Quds Brigades ribbon on his forehead. He said: "When I grow up I will work in the ranks of Islamic Jihad, I will resist the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a martyr and join my father who is in paradise. I'm not afraid of Zionist planes and tanks. I will shoot at them as they shoot at us."
Dor Shahar, who was born and raised in Gaza as Ayman Subah and converted: "My father worked in Israel for 27 years, but every time he heard about Jews murdered in a terror attack, he would say, 'Thank God.' We would go out into the street and people would greet each other, like on a holiday."
Even Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV broadcast a children's program called "Pioneers of Tomorrow," featuring puppets who appear innocent on the surface. Once it was a mouse, then a bee. The turnover was explained to the young viewers by the fact that the previous doll had been killed by IDF forces.
On the day the teddy bear "besieged" led the broadcast, he talked to children who called the studio. One of them identified himself as the son of a fighter from the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, who was killed in the fighting. The boy said that the Jews should be removed from the land of Palestine, and the innocent bear continued: "If they don't want to, we will have to slaughter them."
"At school we were taught that killing Jews is a mitzvah and we are guaranteed a place in paradise," says Dor Shahar. "The educator arrives, a man with a suit and tie. You look at someone who is well-dressed and speaks nicely to you and you are convinced. If he says, I guess that's what it takes."
The "martyrs" will receive a rocket named after them, such as the Rantisi 160 or Ayash 250. Senior fighters, with the rank of brigade commanders, will receive a square after their deaths and the ordinary soldiers will be commemorated on the military wing's website with a picture, usually against the background of the organization's emblem with a Kalashnikov
It is no coincidence that after the massacre on 7 October, Osama Ahmad, one of the educators at UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip, wrote on social media: "Allah is Akbar, Allah is Akbar. Reality surpasses our wildest dreams."
The textbooks in the Gaza Strip are different from those distributed in the West Bank. And if in the West Bank teachers had a relatively free hand, in the Gaza Strip it was material dictated by Hamas from the lower grades to the upper grades. In 2013, the New York Times delved a little deeper into the content of the books distributed in Gaza. He read that the Torah and Talmud had been forged, that Zionism was a racist movement whose goal was to remove the Arabs from the area between the Nile and the Euphrates. The image of Sheikh Yassin was highlighted and compared to Yasser Arafat, and the students were also taught that in Operation Pillar of Defense, winter 2012, three million Zionists entered bomb shelters for eight days and finally begged for a ceasefire.
"Today, the average young Gazan is very religious, and Hamas controls and sets the agenda for him," explains Yossi Amrousi, a former senior Shin Bet official who served in the Gaza sector for more than 20 years. "You can't wear certain clothes, listen to certain music or watch movies. From the age of 6, you are asked in arithmetic class: 'If out of five Jews you killed two, how many will remain?' When you prepare a graduation play for first grade, you have to demonstrate how to kidnap an Israeli soldier into the Gaza Strip. The Jews are your greatest enemy."
יוסי אמרוסי, לשעבר בכיר בשב"כ: "בגיל 6 שואלים ילד בשיעור חשבון: 'אם מתוך חמישה יהודים הרגת שניים, כמה יישארו?' וכשילד מכין הצגת סיום לכיתה א', הוא צריך להדגים איך חוטפים חייל ישראלי לרצועת עזה"
זה כבר הפך להליך שגרתי. לימודים מסודרים במהלך השנה שבמסגרתם הוכנסה תוכנית צבאית 'אלפתווה' (נעורים גבורה) ובחופשת הקיץ מחנות מאורגנים לבני נוער. לא שוקו ולחמנייה וסרט מצויר, אלא הכרת הקלצ'ניקוב ופירוקו בעיניים עצומות, בשיעורי אמל"ח והגנה עצמית. כמאה אלף ילדים משתתפים מדי שנה במחנות כאלה, הנושאים בדרך כלל שמות הקשורים לירושלים, לאל־אקצא או ל"שאהידים".
אמרוסי. "עבורם המוות הוא ניצחון",
האחראי על הקייטנות בצפון הרצועה, זכי אל־שריף, הסביר פעם שמטרת הקייטנה היא להכשיר דור שינהיג את מערכת השחרור המכרעת עם האויב הציוני.
"קייטנות הקיץ כוללות אימונים צבאיים, חינוך לאומני דתי, והחדרה של שנאה יוקדת על ברכי התעמולה החמאסית", מסביר גיא אביעד, מחבר הספר 'לקסיקון חמאס'. "מדי קיץ הם לוקחים את שכבות התיכון, ומי שנמנה עם המשפחה הנכונה ומגלה כישורים מתאימים, מגייסים אותו ליחידות ה'נוחבה'".
2020: 43 percent unemployment rate in Gaza
The Gaza Strip is a place plagued by unemployment, with 2020 per cent of unemployed people in 43. The average salary is NIS 1,300 a month for those who manage to find a living. Hence the incentive to become a Nukhba fighter, who earned $400-500 a month or more. Then there is the improving social status and a promise that even if he is injured or killed, his family will continue to be rewarded.
"It's an army with enlisted certificates and a personal number. You get paid and you feel taken care of," Aviad says. "Every house of a Hamas company commander has been demolished at least four times in the last 15 years, but the organization raises money from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Malaysia and Indonesia, builds new neighborhoods and puts them in new apartments."
Col. (res.) David Hacham: "During the first intifada we conducted a search of the Islamic University in Gaza. We found an Israeli flag with a dagger from which drops of blood were dripping, and at the bottom was an inscription: 'The destruction of Israel is an order of the Koran.' And that happened over 35 years ago!"
In early October, less than a week before the murderous attack, the Southern District Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment in the Beersheba District Court against 26-year-old Muhammad Masri, a resident of Khan Yunis, accused of infiltrating into Israel at the end of August and membership in a terrorist organization and training and operating weapons for terrorist purposes.
An Egyptian claimed that he fled to Israel because of the harsh living conditions in Gaza and denied that he had infiltrated to carry out an attack, but during his interrogation he gave quite a few details about what it was like to be a member of the Nukhba unit, whose members were the main perpetrators of the atrocity on that Black Saturday.
Masri said he joined the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in 2018 and underwent training at the Asklan outpost, where he received uniforms and weapons, and trained in urban combat, among other things. After three years, he received an offer to join Nokhba, after undergoing advanced training, which included a 20-day combat course focused mainly on physical fitness training. At the end of the course, another course was held at Beit Hanoun in groups of 11 people for a period of four months, 12 hours a day.
It was morning and night training with running, crawling through mud, climbing and jumping off burning tires. After that, the training continued with ambushes, assaults, the use of a variety of weapons such as Kalashnikovs, pistols and heavy machine guns. All the training sessions were conducted with the terrorist equipped with a head camera to test his performance. When the Egyptian finished, he was assigned to three months of guard duty and took part in operations along the border aimed at defending against IDF forces, collaborators and infiltrators.
"If I compare them to Fatah members, then the Hamasniks were the toughest in the interrogations, because they have the concept of 'steadfastness,'" says Yossi Amrousi, a senior Shin Bet interrogator who has met many of them over the years. "There is a detainee I remember in particular who told me during interrogation: 'I know what I did, you know, we both know, but I won't confess, because you're an infidel.'
"After all, what is his principle in life? God is Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger, the constitution is the Koran, the way is jihad, and being a martyr is what he wants. When you interrogate Hamasnik, he tells you: 'As far as I'm concerned, it's a win-win situation. If you kill me, I suck, going to heaven with 72 virgins. If I kill you, I won, too.' When you fight one, the war is much harder."
Guy Aviad, who wrote the Hamas lexicon: "Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip for 16 years. Its population is 2.2 million, half of whom are aged 18 and under. It means that the entire younger generation, who carried out the October 7 massacre, were born into this regime and lived within it."
Dr. Nesia Shemer was one of the authors of the book "The Head of Hamas," which dealt with Zionism and the State of Israel in the philosophy of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the movement, who died in 2002. She is well acquainted with the subject of death and its perception by the jihadist.
"The general view of the Quran is that real life is in the afterlife and therefore death is not perceived as frightening and is depicted in beautiful colors for those who sacrificed their lives for Allah," Dr. Shemer explains. "There is a verse that says, 'Don't think of those killed for Allah as dead, but they are alive and God provides for them.' There are descriptions of them sitting in heaven on raised beds and boys passing between them with glasses of water and wine, because in the afterlife alcohol is allowed to drink, and there are 72 virgins waiting for them."
Is this similar to "Death for Kiddush Hashem"?
"No, because in Judaism people love the sanctification of God only for lack of choice. Judaism sanctifies life and action in it. For them, this world serves as a transit station. There are videos coming out of young Gazans who said, 'Why should we live here? We will prepare platforms from our bodies on which Hamas fighters will stand and launch missiles.' There is a religious paragraph by Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, who wrote the book The Laws of Jihad and raises a question from the Middle Ages: 'What to do if the enemy army takes a group of Muslims hostage and uses it as human shields, is it permissible to fight knowing that that group will be killed?' The answer is 'yes.' There is the public benefit versus the individual benefit, in which case the public benefit prevails. Here they look at the benefit of the entire Muslim nation to the 'liberation of Palestine and Al-Aqsa.' So it's not so bad if Gazans sacrifice themselves."
Dr. Shemer. "In the view of the Qur'an, real life is in the afterlife, so death is not perceived as frightening,"
Dor Shahar remembers from his childhood days in Khan Yunis the mass funerals held for "martyrs" after their deaths in clashes with IDF soldiers. "They hold a party accompanied by great singing," he says. "They walk around the streets with stretchers chanting 'Allahu Akbar' and songs about the martyr and his place in paradise. When you take him to the cemetery, people come there in crazy numbers and then come to comfort the family."
The great "martyrs" will have a rocket named after them, such as the Rantisi 160 or Ayash 250. Senior fighters, with the rank of brigade commanders, will receive a square after their deaths and the ordinary soldiers will be commemorated on the military wing's website with a picture, usually against the background of the organization's emblem with a Kalashnikov in hand and a Koran next to them. Sometimes a recorded will and biography will be attached in which the deceased will be praised and told about his "noble family" and what school he attended and what his jihadist path was.
"I investigated quite a few terrorists who tried to carry out suicide bombings, and the belief in the afterlife really strengthens them," says Amrousi, a former senior Shin Bet official. "There was a case of a suicide bomber who, before getting out of the truck that brought him, poured a bottle of perfume on himself, was convinced that he was going to heaven and wanted to be prepared. There was someone who, just before a suicide bombing attack in Rishon LeZion, bowed out. When we caught her, she explained that she wanted to go to heaven to meet her boyfriend, but at the last minute she asked herself, 'How do I find him?' It's the head. The Western brain can't perceive."
2023: Abnormally cruel
Even investigators who had accumulated serious mileage with Hamas members found it difficult to explain the unusual level of cruelty of the October 7 massacre. "Al-Qaradawi, who was their spiritual leader, called for the destruction of Israel, but regarding war ethics he had a clear outlook. Everything they did last month contravenes Sharia law," says Dr. Shemer. "It is forbidden to fight civilians, only soldiers are allowed. In his book The Laws of Jihad there is an entire chapter on the prisoner and his rights, and it never concerned women and children, but only enemy soldiers, and they too must be treated appropriately after they have been captured. Must be fed, must not be abused.
"What happened here is a deviation from the agenda and going to extremes. I read terrorist interrogators who said that it was not the mainstream sheikhs who were influencing, but underground clerics who radicalized their positions. I learned that during interrogations they found a new book of instructions for the fighter about the terrorists."
Dr. Shemer sent me the essence of the book found on one of the terrorists who infiltrated Kibbutz Mafalsim on 7 October. This is a book published by the Ministry of Culture of Gaza that deals with the tenets of the warrior faith. "We will deal with the significant beauty of death to the holy war fighter and its description as a golden moment," it said. "God forbid it should be a source of concern or fear."
Hamas fighters are now even more radical than their spiritual ancestors. It's the hatred they instilled from a young age, and it's social media that never stops pumping poison. "There are videos circulating on Arab networks that get mass views," says Dr. Shemer. "For example, on Sukkot many Jews tend to go up to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, and as far as the extremists are concerned, this is a threat. There is also a video circulating in which a Border Police officer in the Old City beats a Muslim woman. They did not show that the woman had tried to stab the policeman first. Hamas leaders referred to this video, and it fueled the young people."
How long has this hatred been fueled? "During the first intifada we searched the Islamic University in Gaza," says David Hacham, "it was Hamas' main power center in the Gaza Strip. We thought they might be hiding weapons there, and we found an Israeli flag in one of the rooms, in the center of which was a drawing of a stuck dagger, from which drops of blood were dripping, and at the bottom was an inscription: 'The destruction of Israel is an order of the Koran.' And that happened more than 35 years ago!"
Colonel (res.) Smart. "With Hamas, Palestine is not mentioned, with them the space as it was after the days of the Prophet Muhammad," Photo: Joshua Yosef
Even Dor Shahar, who grew up in Khan Yunis, is not surprised by the development that the murderous organization has undergone since it roamed the alleys of the city as a child. He tells how more than once, since settling in Israel, he shouted for us to open our eyes and be vigilant, but his voice was too weak. "I know the fear on the faces of the victims of October 7 from the street where I grew up," he says. "I know the terrorist, I know how he behaves, we went to the same school. Only during the first intifada he was a child who threw stones at soldiers. In the meantime, he has matured and is already launching missiles at Tel Aviv and murdering women and babies without blinking."
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