Elite Israeli Unit Continues Hunt for Every Last October 7 Perpetrator

Elite Israeli Unit Continues Hunt for Every Last October 7 Perpetrator

An elite Israeli task force continues the hunt for Palestinian terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacre, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Jointly run by the Shin Bet security service and Mossad, this special unit has successfully tracked down and helped the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) eliminate hundreds of terrorists who committed atrocities during the attack.

“Hundreds have been struck from the list, in one of the most personal and highly technical targeting campaigns in the history of warfare,” the business daily disclosed. “One by one, militants who videotaped their exploits that day have been identified and killed (…).”

After more than two and a half years, the task is far from over. The task force has meticulously compiled “a list of thousands of names” using cutting-edge technology.

This unit has been named NILI, an acronym in Hebrew for Netzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker, meaning “the eternity of God will not lie” (1 Samuel 15:29). Its reach is not limited to Gaza. As part of the operation, Israel “has struck Hamas leaders in Lebanon and Iran,” the newspaper wrote.

The WSJ continued:

Hundreds have been struck from the list, in one of the most personal and highly technical targeting campaigns in the history of warfare. The campaign continues amid the demands of the war with Iran and a cease-fire agreement in Gaza. (…)

The campaign spans the rank-and-file to Hamas’s top leaders. On Friday, Israel killed Ezzedin al-Haddad, one of the last living senior militants from the group’s military leadership that planned the Oct. 7 attacks. He had been Hamas’s military commander in Gaza since 2025. (…)

Militants who videotaped their Oct. 7 exploits on phones or GoPro cameras to share on social media, or those who phoned home to brag, learned too late the degree of Israel’s surveillance acumen and desire for retribution.

Security forces mark men for death without trial if they find at least two pieces of evidence showing they took part in crimes during the Oct. 7 attacks, according to current and former Israeli security officials. Agents from military intelligence and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, pore over militants’ videos posted on social media, these officials said.

Agents run the images through facial recognition programs to sift for names, the officials said, and comb through intercepted phone calls. They view location data from cell tower logs and interrogate Gazan detainees to uncover who did what.

Despite the October cease-fire with Hamas and release of the last surviving hostages, names continue to be crossed off the list. Israel says it kills targets who allegedly pose a threat, such as approaching the front lines or planning an attack.

On April 12, it was Ali Sami Mohammad Shakra, a Hamas platoon commander whom Israel’s military alleges joined the deadly assault on the Nova music festival and helped capture four hostages, including American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

After Shakra was killed, the military released a screenshot from an Oct. 7 video showing his head poking out of the window of a car near the scene of the abduction.

Three days earlier, the military said it killed Islamic Jihad militant Abd al-Rahman Ammar Hassan Khudari for his alleged role in the attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, where at least a quarter of its residents were killed or kidnapped. (…)

Hundreds of Gazans charged with participating in the Oct. 7 attacks are in Israel’s custody awaiting trial. The parliament recently passed a bill to establish a special military tribunal for their hearings. (…)

Since the October cease-fire, the task force has been reduced to a handful of operatives who track targets and pass along information to the military command responsible for operations in Gaza. (…)

Israel’s military said international law allows it to attack civilians who participate in hostilities. Determining who belongs on the list can take days, months or years, depending on the case.

Before the current cease-fire, members of Shin Bet, the military and the air force gathered in a war room to identify, find and strike targets. The task force tracked the daily comings and goings of a militant’s friends and family, hoping they would meet with targeted men in hiding, said former officials familiar with the details of the campaign.

Two weeks after the October 7 attack, Legal Insurrection reported the establishment of NILI based in several Israeli news outlets. Since then, most of the Gaza-based masterminds of the massacre have been eliminated. Just last Friday, Israel eliminated Hamas’s Gaza-based chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad. The IDF, in its press release, described him as one “of the last senior commanders involved in the planning of the October 7th massacre.”

Comparing it to the operation “Wrath of God” that hunted down the perpetrators of the 1972 Olympics massacre, the WSJ commented that this “echoes Israel’s assassinations of a dozen or so Palestinians responsible for killing 11 of its athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.” That operation reportedly lasted for over two decades.

The task force plans “to kill or capture all who planned or joined in the Oct. 7 attack,” the WSJ noted. With remnants of Hamas’s top leadership still hiding in Qatar, it may take years, if not decades, to bring all culprits to justice.

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