Eti Abramov
Inside a covert IDF intelligence cell tasked with identifying and eliminating every attacker from Oct. 7, officers reveal for the first time how kidnappers were tracked, killers exposed by phone calls and a target struck at the most unexpected moment
The video quickly became, on that same Black Saturday, one of the defining symbols of the horrors of October 7. Avinatan Or and Noa Argamani were seen terrified at the moment they were separated; Argamani, on a motorcycle, reaching out toward Or, who was being marched away, bruised, surrounded by gunmen intoxicated with success. One of them, seen in the footage pushing Or and pulling him away from his loved one, would soon be identified as Ahmed Shaer.
He did not know it in real time, but Shaer and his fellow abductors became the target of a small unit within Military Intelligence, which was given one of the most complex missions of the war: to locate all the abductors, murderers, rapists, looters and arsonists who crossed into Israel on October 7 and neutralize them. They operate in absolute secrecy from a small room at Southern Command, under the name NILI, an acronym taken from the biblical verse “The Eternal One of Israel will not lie,” perhaps a hint that none of these terrorists would be forgotten. Not even Shaer.
The problem was that he seemed to know it and tried to stay under the radar. “He was extremely cautious,” said Capt. A., commander of NILI, whose members are speaking for the first time in an exclusive interview with 7 Days, Yedioth Ahronoth’s weekend magazine. “Shaer almost never left the house or spoke with people. For a long time we did not even know where his home was. He left no trace.”
But about a year ago, that changed. Capt. A. received the long-awaited call indicating Shaer’s estimated location and began feeding intelligence into a file that would make it possible to build a case for his neutralization, or in intelligence parlance, his “incrimination.” Working alongside him was Sgt. S., an intelligence analyst trained to track down terrorists and operatives in hiding.
“The work was relatively long,” S. recalled, “both in incriminating him and tying him to the event, and in narrowing down and locating his whereabouts. It was a lengthy process that took about 10 months.”
Eventually, Capt. A. and Sgt. S. focused on several buildings in Gaza, one of which, according to their research, was where Shaer was hiding. “We debated between them,” Capt. A. said. “In the end, S. managed to link him to one specific building and then to a room where we knew he slept. We prepared in the middle of the night to catch him while he was asleep.”
The operation was set for March 25 of this year. Toward evening, Capt. A. and Sgt. S. arrived at the strike cell, a room serving as a command center where representatives from the Air Force, intelligence and operations staff are physically present or dial in by phone.
“This is work done quietly and with extreme professionalism. There is no shouting in the room. S. and I have two minutes on the clock to give them the entire intelligence picture. We have been on him for 10 months, but at that moment you have to deliver the most focused, precise and rapid information possible, information that can assist the strike: what the house looks like, what the walls are made of, when the target goes to sleep. At that moment, my role as the intelligence officer is to say whether the intelligence picture has changed. I have to verify that the target is still there.”
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