The Palestine Chronicle / July 23, 2024
The Palestinian Resistance Movement, Hamas, has created “detailed dossiers” of more than 2000 Israeli Air Force personnel, in what appears to be a list of potential targets in “revenge” for killing the “children of Gaza”, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper has reported.
Leaked online this week, each dossier includes the soldier’s “full name, their base or unit, I.D. number, mobile phone number, email address, social media accounts, names of family members, and in some cases passwords, license plates, credit card numbers and bank account information,” the paper said on Monday.
They were “created by Hamas as part of intelligence-gathering operations” and ranged in length from a few “to over 200 pages long” with the cover page reportedly stating: “As revenge for the killers of (the) children of Gaza.”
The reports, the paper said, were shared with a group of international investigative reporters in partnership with Germany’s Die Zeit and ZDF, Austria’s Der Standard and Haaretz.
Haaretz said the dossiers were “produced using an automatic tool known as a profiler, which makes it possible to collect, cross-reference and fuse together intelligence from open sources (OSINT) to create a detailed ‘profile’ on intelligence targets.”
The leaked reports have been available on hacker platforms since at least December, but it is unclear who leaked them online.
‘Iranian hack’
Some of the information, the report added, seems to have been taken from Atid College, “which was the victim of an Iranian hack last May.”
The report also quotes Ari Ben Am, co-founder of Telemetry Data Labs, a firm described as “tracking hack-and-leaks and influence operations by anti-Israel groups”, as saying “all signs would point to Iran.”
“Iran has a rich history of carrying out hack-and-leaks with a high operational tempo and amplifying them via hacktivist front groups,” he reportedly said.
The dossiers also contain data taken from other sources, for example, details on vehicles from an insurance company, as well as possibly the Israeli voter registry and information taken from social media sites.
‘Legal action abroad’
In at least one case, Haaretz said, the Air Force website “provided confirmation of the identity of one of the officers for whom a detailed report was prepared and a link between him and offensive activity in Gaza.”
This could make him” a target for intelligence gathering, or expose him to legal action abroad,” the report said.
Some Israeli soldiers have already been warned about the existence of the reports, indicating that the Israeli authorities are taking the threat seriously. The Israeli military has acknowledged that it has been aware of the data for several months.
Ongoing genocide
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 39,090 Palestinians have been killed, and 90,147 wounded. Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
