Intelligence Debacle
Shocking IDF Probe: Hamas Trained Elite Force to Hijack Merkava Tanks Using Soldiers' Social Media Blunders
During investigations into the October 7 massacre failures, the IDF was stunned to discover that Hamas terrorists succeeded in disabling tanks in the Gaza envelope communities and even attempted to seize control of them and drive them into Gaza.
In a revelation that exposes a glaring intelligence failure ahead of the October 7, 2023, massacre, an Israeli military investigation has uncovered how Hamas spent years scouring IDF soldiers' social media posts to learn the secrets of disabling and operating advanced Merkava Mark 4 tanks, knowledge that enabled terrorists to paralyze several vehicles during the deadly assault on southern Israel.
The probe, detailed in a report by military journalist Doron Kadosh on Army Radio and corroborated by IDF sources, reveals that Hamas's elite Nukhba unit amassed thousands of seemingly innocuous photos, videos, and comments from armored corps training sessions, including footage from the Shizafon base, to piece together critical details about the tank's classified shutdown mechanism, vulnerabilities, and operating procedures.
Armed with this open-source intelligence, the group built full-scale mock-ups and sophisticated simulators to train a dedicated "tank crew" force, aiming not just to disable but to seize and repurpose Israeli armor against advancing troops.The original Hamas blueprint, pieced together from seized documents and underground "Pentagon" training complexes raided in early 2024, was even more audacious: Capture tanks from Gaza envelope communities, drive them back into the Strip, and deploy them in combat, a scenario that could have dramatically escalated the chaos of the Simchat Torah holiday attacks, which killed 1,200 and saw 250 hostages taken.
While terrorists succeeded in temporarily neutralizing several Merkavas on October 7 – exploiting the secret internal button known only to crews, they failed to fully hijack any, averting a potential catastrophe.
The findings, part of ongoing post-massacre inquiries, underscore a profound operational security lapse: What Israel dismissed as routine training demos or "deterrence theater" was, in Gaza, a meticulous, multi-year buildup to a sophisticated assault. "This was no accident – it was a masterclass in exploiting our own openness," one anonymous IDF officer told investigators, highlighting how lax social media habits handed Hamas a roadmap to the Merkava's inner workings.
In response, the IDF has since tightened social media guidelines for active-duty and reserve soldiers, banning uploads from combat zones and mandating pre-approval for training content to prevent future leaks.
The scandal adds fuel to broader recriminations over the intelligence breakdowns that allowed Hamas to breach Israel's vaunted border defenses, with critics questioning why such patterns weren't flagged sooner amid the group's escalating drills.