An IDF operation that penetrated a top Hamas intelligence headquarters on December 18 led to seizing electronics, which helped the Shin Bet bust open a special Hamas terrorist cell using Jews to transfer weapons and explosives.
The Jewish-Israeli citizens, mostly in the Jerusalem area, were duped into believing that they were working for Jews living overseas and did not realize they were working for Hamas.
All of the instructions for picking up and dropping off packages, or funds, or purchasing various gifts – which in the end were connected to weapons or explosives for Hamas – were delivered to the unwitting Jewish agents electronically.
Hamas’s attempts to recruit Jews as spies
This was not the first time that Hamas tried to recruit or use Jews as spies, but it was one of the largest-scale reported operations where Hamas was duping larger numbers of people using online identities as opposed to going after one or two individuals with checkered backgrounds and trying to compromise them to spy knowingly.
Whenever any Jewish agent sought to speak to their handlers by telephone, the Hamas handlers pretended that it was too difficult to coordinate because of living overseas and the time difference.
The initial breakthrough came through a mix of the Shin Bet and the IDF intelligence’s office for collecting items seized from Hamas for inspecting, cataloging, and translating into operational intelligence.
Both units used the breakthroughs obtained from computers, cell phones and other items in mid-December to carry out a counter-intelligence sting operation against the Hamas handlers, though the announcement about busting the plot did not mention arrests.
A statement did say that Israeli intelligence uncovered that a number of the Hamas handlers were part of an elite group who used to live in the West Bank, were later arrested by the IDF, and then expelled to Gaza during the 2011 Gilad Schalti hostage exchange deal.
Documents recovered by Israeli intelligence identified September 2023, the month before the October 7 Hamas invasion, as a time of heightened activity, though the Hamas spying scheme might have gone back further in time.
Israeli intelligence emphasized that Israeli citizens should not take instructions from unidentified persons online.
On December 28, the IDF brought the Jerusalem Post and some other media outlets for a special visit to the military intelligence catalog facility.
From October 7 until late December, the office of around 350 personnel, the majority reservists, had sorted through over 65 million electronic files and 500,000 physical documents, with the current rate of new incoming electronic files reaching the region of one million per day.
Using the IDF intelligence catalog office’s conclusions, there have been a huge number of instances where IDF soldiers in the field were saved from Hamas ambushes.
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