Report: Israel Formed Secret Unit to Kill or Capture Every Oct. 7 Attacker

Israel established a secret elite intelligence task force in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre to track down and kill or capture every terrorist involved in the attack — from senior commanders who orchestrated the assault to individual gunmen who crossed into southern Israel during the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

According to a detailed Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday, the unit — known as NILI, a Hebrew acronym derived from a biblical verse meaning “The Eternal One of Israel Does Not Lie” — was formed by Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service and military intelligence shortly after the Hamas-led attack that killed roughly 1,200 people and saw 251 Israelis taken hostage, most of them civilians.

Earlier reports following the massacre indicated the operation also involved Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence agency, signaling from the outset that the campaign would likely extend beyond Gaza to Hamas operatives and leadership figures based abroad.

The report said the task force compiled a database containing thousands of names, including Hamas Nukhba commandos — the terror group’s elite assault force that spearheaded much of the October 7 infiltration — as well as additional Palestinians identified as participating in the massacre. Israeli officials told the newspaper that targets are reportedly approved only after investigators obtain at least two independent pieces of evidence placing them at the scene of the attack or directly tying them to the assault.

According to the report, Israeli intelligence personnel relied on a sweeping range of surveillance and intelligence tools to identify suspects, including facial recognition software run against videos uploaded by Hamas terrorists themselves, intercepted communications, cellphone location data, social media footage, and interrogations of Gazan detainees captured during the war.

The campaign reportedly extended far beyond senior Hamas leadership, with Israeli officials insisting that “no participant is deemed too insignificant” to escape accountability. One example cited in the report involved a Palestinian who was filmed driving a tractor through the Gaza border fence during the initial October 7 onslaught and was later killed in an Israeli strike nearly two years afterward while walking through Gaza.

Other targets included senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives tied directly to atrocities committed during the massacre. Among them was Ali Sami Muhammad Shakra, a Hamas Nukhba Force platoon commander accused of participating in the kidnapping of American-Israeli hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alon Ohel, Eliya Cohen, and Or Levy near the Nova music festival massacre site.

The report also pointed to the April killing of Abd al-Rahman Ammar Hassan Khudari, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist accused of participating in the massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz.

One of the most significant recent eliminations came last week with the killing of Hamas Gaza chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad, whom IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir described as “one of the chief perpetrators of the October 7 massacre and the head of Hamas’s military wing.”

According to Israeli officials, Haddad helped direct the planning and execution of the October 7 attack, managed combat operations against Israeli forces throughout the war, and played a central role in Hamas’s hostage captivity system. Israeli officials further accused Haddad of attempting to rebuild Hamas’s military infrastructure during the ongoing ceasefire.

“Today, we succeeded in eliminating him,” Zamir declared following the strike. “The IDF will continue to pursue our enemies, strike them, and settle accounts with everyone who took part in the October 7 massacre.”

The Wall Street Journal report said the campaign has continued despite the ceasefire in Gaza, though at a reduced operational pace, with a smaller group of NILI operatives continuing to pass intelligence on targets to Israeli commanders overseeing military operations.

Inside Israel, the operation has drawn repeated comparisons to the country’s years-long campaign following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, when Israeli intelligence hunted down Palestinian terrorists involved in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes.

“It will take time, just as it did after Munich,” Mossad Director David Barnea said in 2024. “But our hands will reach them, wherever they are.”

The broader campaign has also reportedly extended beyond Gaza, including operations linked to the killings of senior Hamas officials Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, alongside the eliminations inside Gaza of Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa, and other senior Hamas commanders widely identified by Israel as key architects of the October 7 massacre.

Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior Shin Bet official, told the newspaper the operation was intended to send a broader deterrent message throughout the region.

“The clear message to all future enemies is to think again about the price of a terrorist operation like that,” he said.

Michael Milstein, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer specializing in Palestinian affairs, similarly argued the campaign reflected broader regional realities.

“In the Middle East, revenge is an important part of the discourse,” Milstein told the newspaper. “It is about how serious anyone in your environment sees you. Unfortunately, this is the language of this neighborhood.”