A booklet recovered from the body of a Hamas fighter killed in Israel earlier this month included detailed instructions for operating assault rifles, grenade launchers, and explosives.
But along with those weapons of war, the pamphlet also listed directions for another key tool used by the militant group: a GoPro camera.
This from cnn.com.
A Hamas fighter is seen wearing a body camera on top of his head before the attack on Israel.
At least a half-dozen of the militants who breached the Gaza border and attacked Israeli communities had cameras strapped to their bodies, in an apparent attempt to collect propaganda material during the incursion. Now, videos from the devices of slain Hamas fighters are being combed through by Israeli first responders and intelligence officials.
The videos—some of which have been posted to social media—provide a harrowing first-person view of the Hamas fighters’ final hours of life, and the death and destruction they caused during their unprecedented assault. They show the slaughter of civilians, indiscriminate shooting in Israeli communities, and the taking of hostages—clear evidence of war crimes that undermines Hamas’ claims that its fighters did not enter Israel with the intent of killing civilians.
Hamas instruction booklet recovered by IDF includes instructions for a GoPro Hero4 camera.
Gina Ligon, a counterterrorism expert who analyzed the footage for CNN—a fake news service known for colluding with the enemy—said:
I don’t think Hamas wanted us to see [the videos of attacks on civilians]. That is not congruent with their narrative that they’re defenders of Palestine—that was terrorism.
At the same time, the videos also make obvious how unprepared Israel was for the attack, with large groups of Hamas fighters seen breaking through the Gaza border unopposed by the Israeli military.
The clips were posted on the social media website Telegram by South First Responders, an Israeli volunteer group that says its members were among the first to return to communities attacked by Hamas. They said the video came from GoPro-style cameras recovered from dead Hamas fighters.
Analysts at the research groups Bellingcat and the Centre for Information Resilience geolocated several of the videos, and CNN independently confirmed their locations and geolocated additional footage. CNN reviewed dozens of videos and is publishing only snippets of longer footage that illustrate key elements of the attack.
One set of videos shows the full journey of a single Hamas fighter into Israel: from a dramatic early-morning border crossing, to a rampage of violence through an Israeli kibbutz, to his apparent death after being shot by an unknown assailant.
Hamas has released some of the footage that its fighters took during their devastating assault on its own Telegram account, setting it to stirring music and highlighting attacks on Israeli tanks and soldiers. But the body camera footage recovered and released by Israeli first responders shows a fuller picture of the atrocities committed by the group, including the murder and hostage-taking of civilians.
Aymenn al-Tamimi, a researcher with the Middle East Forum who has studied recent wars in the region, noted that the fighters seen in the videos clearly appeared to be members of Hamas’ military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, based on their equipment and clothing. He said footage from the recovered devices ‘contrasted with the much more sanitized, official’ videos Hamas has posted itself.
al-Tamimi said:
They definitely don’t want the idea of having an image of brutality that makes people prone to equating them with Islamic State.
Ligon, the director of the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, a U.S. government-affiliated research organization said:
Some of the videos appear to have been filmed in a wide-angle perspective that makes them more immersive for viewers.
Further:
That really showed some sophistication in terms of their planning for what they wanted to get in the videos.
To have those shots filmed in a way that were really reminiscent of first-person shooter video games, so people can feel like they’re in it.
Terrorists have long used footage from their attacks for propaganda reasons, and social media has accelerated the trend. The Islamic State ran an extensive social media operation that released videos of beheadings and other atrocities, some filmed from a similar first-person perspective. The right-wing extremist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 also livestreamed footage of the attack from a camera mounted on his helmet, as did the shooter who fatally shot 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket last year.
Peter Bergen, an author and CNN national security analyst who has studied terrorism, said:
This is just the next evolution of propaganda.
He noted that many of the Hamas fighters in the footage appeared to be:
[Y]oung men in their 20s—they’re very comfortable with social media and they live in a social media world.
Other videos posted by South First Responders show the journey a fighter takes from Gaza to the nearby kibbutz of Kerem Shalom, as well as attacks in other Israeli communities.
The importance of the body camera footage to Hamas is highlighted by the roughly 40-page instruction manual for the group’s fighters, which CNN obtained from the Israeli government. Officials said the document was found on the body of a killed Hamas fighter in Israel. CNN has not been able to independently authenticate the origin of the document.
The Arabic-language pamphlet bears the logo of the al-Qassam Brigades and states that it is “a secret military document” from 2023. It includes basic details on Israeli military equipment and divisions, firearm and medical training, and tactical information such as strategies for attacking tanks.
On one page of the booklet titled “media specialty”—opposite descriptions of four different rifles—is a short instruction manual for a GoPro camera, as well as a point-and-shoot digital camera. The basic instructions include advice like ‘change shooting modes by pressing the Mode button.’
The videos may have been filmed for propaganda purposes, but they’re also likely a treasure trove for Israeli intelligence analysts as they work to understand Hamas’ actions and the tactics used in the attack, experts who reviewed some of the clips said. The footage could feature in future investigations into the failures of the Israeli military to defend against the incursion.
The atrocities the videos capture also makes the footage powerful evidence of war crimes committed by Hamas fighters—such as the killing of civilians and taking of civilian hostages—even though it’s unclear whether anyone who committed the acts will ever face any kind of court hearing.
Bergen, the national security analyst, said:
This would be very good evidence in a war crimes tribunal—your location, people’s faces—if it ever came to that. These are clearly war crimes.
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