A Hamas ‘abduction manual’ with detailed instructions on how to take civilians hostage, bind them by their wrists and ankles, collect their identification papers and ‘kill the problematic’ was released by the Israeli Defense Forces on Monday along with grisly new bodycam footage that shows Hamas fighters gunning down civilians.
About the hostage manual
It is a detailed eight-page ‘how to’ guide for snatch squads who stormed Israeli settlements to kill and abduct the residents.
Urging the terrorists to ‘create chaos’, the directions are spread over eight chapters which have titles such as ‘Isolation and control’ and ‘Camouflage and hiding’.
Intriguingly, the manual suggests the October 7 atrocity may not have gone according to plan – with the fanatics not supposed to take hostages all the way back to Gaza.
Some 203 terrified innocents ended up as ‘human shields’ in the territory.
But the manual indicates the original purpose of the hostage-taking was to keep them in Israel possibly to aid a protracted standoff. Or, as the manual starkly puts it, ‘cannon fodder’.
The kidnapping directives — imprinted with a watermark that reads ‘al-Quds brigade’ and labeled ‘Top secret’ in Arabic — also include instructions on how to livestream kidnappings, a tactic that was used by some Hamas hostage takers during the Oct. 7 attack.
The bloodiest terrorist attack on Israeli soil
The surprise assault, which killed over 1,000 civilians, was the bloodiest terrorist attack on Israeli soil in the country’s 76-year history.
The release of the materials appears to be part of an effort by Israeli officials to counter claims by Hamas that hostages were seized by Palestinian civilians who entered Israel during the attack, not its fighters.
The documents also suggest that hostage-taking was a core goal of Hamas’ strike and that the group planned to document it in both photos and videos.
IDF officials said the documents were recovered from the bodies of Hamas members who attacked kibbutzim near the Gaza border on Oct. 7.
It is unclear whether the ‘abduction manual’ documents were related to an attack on a specific village or broad guidance for Hamas attackers.
Israeli officials also released Hamas bodycam footage of terrorists shooting civilians.
The footage includes a video taken by the bodycam of a Hamas gunman as he shoots at two civilians, who appear to be a man and woman, as they try to drive past in their car.
A second clip shows the same man running up to the car and saying, ‘He is not alive. I checked him just now,’ he said.
‘I checked them well. Let’s go, let’s go.’
A third clip, which was previously released by an Israeli first responder organization, shows the dashcam footage from the civilian car as it is being fired upon by the Hamas members.
