Now Israeli secret services are hunting the attackers and Europe is launching key SpaceX satellites into space

Following the unprecedented terrorist attack by Hamas on the weekend of October 7, the Israeli state is mobilizing against the Islamists in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army has called up 360,000 reservists and wants to destroy Hamas in a ground offensive. Nevertheless, a special unit of the Israeli secret services would specifically hunt down the attackers involved on October 7.

The unit would be called ‘Nili’, referring to a Jewish underground organization from the First World War, reports the ‘Times of Israel’. It would be subordinate to the foreign secret service Mossad and the domestic service Shin Bet. The operatives’ job is to eliminate a special unit within Hamas’s military wing, a group called “Nuchba” (Elite). The “Nukhba” unit is said to have carried out the massacres and kidnappings in Israel on the weekend of October 7.

It is said that the first “Nuchba” leaders are dead

According to the Israeli military, about 2,500 Palestinian terrorists were involved in the attack on southern Israel. They killed at least 1,400 people, injured 5,400, some seriously, and abducted more than 200 hostages to Gaza. A majority of the terrorists, around 1,500, are believed to have been killed in the attack. The rest are believed to have fled to Gaza and could now be targeted by the “Nili” agents.

The Israeli army says it has killed several leaders of the Palestinian ‘Nukhba’ unit in recent days, including Ali Qadhi and Billal Al Kedra. According to the Jerusalem Post, as commanders of the terrorist brigades, they were among the key figures in the attacks on October 7. At the top of Israel’s terror list are Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Jihia al-Sinwar.

Top targets on Israel’s terror list

Al-Sinwar has led Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2017, while top boss Ismail Haniyya is mainly in Qatar or Turkey. Al-Sinwar was one of the founding members of Hamas during the so-called First Intifada in 1987. Al-Sinwar spent 23 years in Israeli prisons for the murder of two Israeli soldiers. He was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange. Now the 61-year-old is said to be hiding in the Hamas tunnel system. Israeli military spokesman Richard Hecht called al-Sinwar the “face of evil” and threatened him that he was “a dead man.”

Mohammed Deif has also been active for Hamas since the 1980s, writes the Times of Israel. Accordingly, Deif has led Hamas’ military wing from the underground since 2002. Israel accuses the Palestinian, born in 1965, of planning suicide bombings, kidnappings and other terrorist attacks. Deif is said to have survived several assassination attempts, but was seriously injured. In an audio message on October 7, Deif said: “Today the anger of our people is exploding.”

“Caesarea” as a model?

It seems doubtful whether a targeted assassination of its leaders could weaken Hamas in the long term: “The loss of al-Sinwar and Deif would certainly affect Hamas, after all, they belong to the top of the group,” the Times of Israel quotes political scientist . HA Hallyer of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “But it can be assumed that the group has human resources to compensate for the loss.”

This is not the first time that Israeli secret services have specifically hunted down those responsible for a terrorist attack. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, a Palestinian terrorist team ambushed the Israeli team and killed eleven athletes. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered the Mossad to find and kill the masterminds of the attack.

The special unit ‘Caesarea’ that was subsequently established is said to have killed more than twenty targets until the 1990s. The campaign only officially ended with the Oslo Accords in 1994. The first ‘Caesarea’ commander was Ehud Barak, who served as Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001. The attacks by the ‘Caesarea’ unit are controversial because innocent people were also killed, for example 30-year-old Moroccan Ahmed Bouchiki, who was mistaken for a wanted terrorist. Steven Spielberg addressed the “Caesarea” department in his 2005 film “Munich.”

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