Target civilians, record the carnage: Yahya Sinwar's 2022 memo planning Oct. 7 - New York Times - Jerusalem Post Staff

 

by Jerusalem Post Staff

The memo was found on a computer unconnected to any network in an underground complex used by Muhammed Sinwar while he was in hiding.

 

Sinwar escaping in civilian attire

(photo credit: SECTION 27A COPYRIGHT ACT)

After the assassination of Muhammed Sinwar, an Israeli special unit found a digitalized copy of Yahya Sinwar’s six-page handwritten memo explicitly calling for Hamas to target Israeli civilians ahead of the October 7 invasion, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The memo was found on a computer unconnected to any network in an underground complex used by Sinwar while he was in hiding.

The letter, dated August 24, 2022, includes directives written in Arabic to target both military and civilian targets, seven Israeli officials told the NYT.

Record the massacre

The American newspaper, which viewed the letter, reported that Hamas was instructed to broadcast the atrocities committed during the invasion to evoke fear and a feeling of instability across the Jewish state.

“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 said.

“Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them on TV channels to the whole world,” a commander from Gaza City called Abu al-Baraa told operatives in the area of Kibbutz Sa’ad, according to a message intercepted by Israel. “Slaughter them. End the children of Israel.”

Children's toys and personal items lie on the bloodstained floor of a child's bedroom, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel October 17, 2023. (credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)

Similar instructions had also been issued by commanders then issued on Oct. 7, according to hours of previously unreported communications between commanders and subordinates intercepted by Israel during the assault and shared with the NYT.

In the early days of the war, Hamas denied targeting civilians and claimed to have taken women and children hostage for their own safety.

The majority of the children were released in a November 2023 deal, though the bodies of the young Bibas brothers and their mother, Shiri, were not released for over a year. It was discovered that the family, except father Yarden Bibas, were beaten to death by Palestinians shortly after their abduction.

Burning the kibbutzim

While Sinwar’s instructions did not include taking civilians hostage, it ordered terrorists to enter residential neighborhoods and set them on fire “with gasoline or diesel from a tanker.”

“Two or three operations, in which an entire neighborhood, kibbutz, or something similar will be burned, must be prepared,” the memo said.

An intercepted message from a Hamas commander revealed that the directive was followed on October 7. 

Abu Muhammed, a Hamas commander from Gaza City, told subordinates: “Start setting homes on fire.”

“Burn, burn,” he said, according to the intercepts. “I want the whole kibbutz to be in flames.”

“Set fire to anything,” a Hamas Commander, Abu al-Abed, said around the same time.

Hamas Commander Abu Muath instructed terrorists to “Kill everyone on the road…Kill everyone you encounter” in one intercepted message. “Guys, take a lot of hostages…Take a lot of hostages.”

Cruelty to soldiers

The memo also called for acts of cruelty to be carried out against Israeli soldiers, focusing on painful and symbolic acts.

“Stomp on the heads of soldiers,” it said.

It listed “opening fire on soldiers at point-blank range, slaughtering some of them with knives, blowing up tanks.”

Izzat al-Rishq, the Qatar-based director of Hamas’s media office, refused to comment on the New York Times report. 

Jerusalem Post Staff

Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-870091

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