New GoPro footage aired on a major Israeli news channel shows terrorists from Hamas’ elite Nukhba force seamlessly infiltrating the Israeli border on October 7, breaching the fence undetected.
The footage showed that it took terrorists just seven and a half minutes to penetrate all four levels of security at the border between Gaza and Israel: barbed wire fences, an old border fence, a dirt ditch, and the concrete “smart fence” embedded with sensors. Hamas fighters used explosives, iron culverts – brought expressly for this purpose – and ramps for vehicles to cross. They were able to do so without encountering a single Israeli soldier, going on to commit the atrocities which left some 1,200 Israelis dead and 240 taken to Gaza as hostages.
Zohar Dvir, the former head of the Yamam counter-terrorism police unit, said in Channel 12’s Monday night report that by the time Hamas militants swarmed the border on Oct. 7, it was already too late for the IDF to mount a defense against such large numbers of intruders.
According to a 2018 interview with the former CEO of Magal Security Systems Ltd., the defense firm responsible for constructing and maintaining the "smart fence", the barrier was not built to withstand thousands of people attempting to stampede through it.
“It would take about 30 seconds to cross,” Saar Koursh told Bloomberg. The fence “wasn’t built to stop riots” but rather “to give real-time indication if somebody is trying to cross the border.”
Koursh said the barrier was manufactured as an accompaniment to suitable military deployments to effectively safeguard the border: “When you combine several technologies all together with the military, then you have an effective barrier, a system in place that can deter, delay and detect,” he said.
A still from GoPro footage of a Hamas militant on Oct. 7 shows the terrorists mounting motorbikes as they prepare to cross a break in the Israeli border fences. (Photo: Screen capture/X)
According to Dvir’s assessment of the Oct. 7 GoPro footage on Channel 12, Hamas’ operatives were at an advantage due to their numbers and the element of surprise but, from a combat perspective, the terror group demonstrated negligent approaches to battle including holding their weapons incorrectly and not wearing helmets.
Dvir also drew attention to a small bag seemingly filled with white powder seen in footage of Hamas commanders preparing for the attack, and other reports have already speculated that Hamas militants used an amphetamine-type stimulant called captagon during the Oct. 7 attacks. Manufactured primarily in Lebanon and Syria, Israeli officials refer to captagon as the “jihadi drug” given reports of its use by ISIS fighters to suppress fatigue, fear and hunger during fighting in Syria and Iraq.
The IDF has not officially confirmed reports that Hamas used captagon during their attack, but two security officials with insight into the matter told news outlet USA Today in November that small bags of the drug were found in the pockets of clothes and tactical gear worn by some of the militants who stormed the Israeli border on Oct. 7.
Israeli forces claim to have killed some 1,000 terrorists in Israel on and after the day of the attack. According to The Times of Israel, authorities will investigate the failures that allowed for the surprise border breach after the war has ended.
