The Hamas terror organization's military intelligence gathered critical information about IDF bases and equipment via the social media accounts of Israeli soldiers over a five-year period before the Oct. 7 attacks, an investigation revealed.

The report, which was published on Israeli Army Radio, showed that Hamas began operating an intelligence gathering network on social media as early as 2018, collecting information from around 100,000 accounts of soldiers and officers.

For years, soldiers exposed sensitive information on social networks via photos or short videos uploaded to social media accounts, despite the military's ostensibly strict rules limiting activity on social media.

Hamas collected the various pieces of information and built a remarkably detailed and precise picture of Israel's military capabilities, including the construction of a "Gaza tank crew" for Nukhba fighters. Hamas was able to reconstruct the inside of a Merkava Mark 4 tank, training its fighters to drive and operate the tank.

The report, by military correspondent Doron Kadosh, revealed that besides relying on public social media accounts, Hamas also created "avatar" accounts, which they used to gain access to private social media groups, including those for new recruits.

The wealth of information allowed the terror organization to produce detailed reports on IDF troop deployments, the physical layout of IDF bases, including the positions of gates, security cameras, armories, and safe rooms.

Hamas used this information to construct models of IDF outposts, which allowed its fighters to train for the Oct. 7 attacks with a high degree of precision. While some of the models were physical models, in which the fighters ran operational drills, the terror organization also used the thousands of pictures and videos to construct 3D models, allowing fighters to train for various infiltration scenarios using relatively cheap virtual reality (VR) headsets.

As previously mentioned, those models also enabled the construction of a tank simulator. According to Kadosh, the IDF was stunned to discover that Hamas fighters managed to disable several tanks in the Gaza border area. Fighters also tried – unsuccessfully – to drive the tanks into Gaza.

Hamas terrorists knew the location of a secret button in the tank, which, when pressed, disabled it for a certain period of time. The IDF only discovered the extent of Hamas' knowledge in early 2024, when IDF soldiers discovered an underground tunnel in the central camps known as the "Pentagon." There, the troops discovered evidence of the Merkava 4 simulators and IDF base layouts, based on social media accounts of IDF soldiers.

In "the Pentagon," Hamas stored maps of the IDF posts, the full-scale models of posts and military equipment, the VR simulators, and intelligence reports gathered over the five year period before Oct. 7.

The IDF investigation revealed that had Hamas' ambitious plan been successful, the Nukhba force could have seized tanks, driven them into the Strip, and used them against IDF troops. The plan was only thwarted because Hamas fighters managed to disable the tanks, but couldn't reactivate them.

In Israel, intelligence officials had some knowledge of Hamas' social media intelligence operation; however, most dismissed it. Security officials believed that Hamas' trainings and preparations were largely "showmanship."

The extent of the security breach only became obvious after interrogations of Hamas terrorists who were captured, and following the ground operations in Gaza, when the IDF discovered the terror organization's intelligence database.

One officer told Army Radio that Hamas had better knowledge of one of the IDF bases than he did, saying, "and I served there for many years."

The Army Radio report said that as many as 2,500 Hamas terrorists were involved in the intelligence gathering system, monitoring posts by individual soldiers, and compiling reports on facility layouts, location of soldiers and equipment, and security weaknesses, to be exploited during an attack.

The report highlights a growing problem, which the IDF has admitted before, but which some officers say has not been adequately addressed, the widespread use of personal phones, even in locations and in exercises in which army regulations prohibit. Even during ground operations in Gaza, there were multiple instances of soldiers posting to social media from personal devices while on active duty inside the Gaza Strip, in violation of army regulations.

The release of the report indicates that, as part of reforms to be implemented by the IDF following the Gaza War, proper operational discipline will be an area of focus for the military.

Republished with permission from All Israel News.