A specialized Israeli military team uncovered a digitized version of a six-page handwritten memorandum attributed to Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, which explicitly directed operatives to strike Israeli civilians in the lead-up to the October 7 assault, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Investigators found the file on an offline computer inside an underground hideout linked to Sinwar, discovered after the killing of his brother Mohammed Sinwar, a Gaza-based Hamas field commander. The device had not been connected to external networks, officials said.
Dated August 24, 2022, the document contained Arabic instructions that ordered attacks on both military and nonmilitary targets, according to seven Israeli officials who reviewed the memo and spoke with the newspaper.
The New York Times reported that the memorandum urged Hamas to deliberately record and publicize the violence during the massacre to sow terror and instability throughout Israel.
“It needs to be affirmed to the unit commanders to undertake these actions intentionally, film them, and broadcast images of them as fast as possible,” the memo read.
Intercepted communications from Gaza commanders further showed explicit calls to capture and air gruesome scenes. In one intercepted instruction, a Gaza City commander known as Abu al-Baraa told fighters operating near Kibbutz Sa’ad: “Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them across TV channels for the whole world to see.”
Other intercepted messages captured horrific slogans and orders. “Slaughter them. End the children of Israel,” one recording stated.
Additional intercepted exchanges between field leaders and their subordinates—previously unreported—also contained parallel orders that Israeli intelligence intercepted during the offensive and later shared with The New York Times.
In the war’s initial days, Hamas publicly denied directing attacks at civilians and maintained that women and children taken captive were held for their safety.
Many children were released in a November 2023 agreement, but some families fared worse: Ariel and Kfir Bibas and their mother Shiri remained captive for more than a year and were later found to have been killed in custody; their father, Yarden Bibas, was freed alive in an exchange.
Although Sinwar’s memorandum did not explicitly call for taking civilians hostage, it did instruct fighters to torch residential areas using fuel from tankers and other sources.
“Two or three operations must be planned to burn down an entire neighborhood, kibbutz, or something similar,” the memo stated.
Israeli intercepts indicate that operatives followed these orders on October 7. One Gaza City commander, Abu Muhammed, was recorded telling his forces: “Start setting homes on fire.”
“Burn, burn,” he urged, according to the intercepted exchanges. “I want the whole kibbutz to be in flames.”
Other leaders issued comparable commands. “Set fire to anything,” a commander identified as Abu al-Abed was recorded saying around the same time.
In another intercepted message, a field officer named Abu Muath told his fighters to show no mercy: “kill everyone on the road… Kill everyone you encounter.”
“Men, take a lot of hostages… Take a lot of hostages,” he continued, repeating the call.
Sinwar’s memo also advocated extreme violence against Israeli soldiers, urging acts that would be both symbolic and brutal.
“Stomp on the heads of soldiers,” the document declared.
It listed brutal examples—shooting soldiers at close range, slaughtering them with knives, and blowing up tanks—as the types of atrocities to be carried out by Nukhba fighters.
Izzat al-Rishq, who directs Hamas’s media office from Qatar, declined to respond to The New York Times’ account.
{Matzav.com}
