Inside Israel’s high-tech campaign to kill or capture every October 7 attacker

The girl who was among those who attacked in the desert concertHelplessly she reached her lover, who was being restrained by the people of Gaza. This video was the first of many scary images Hamas attack on southern Israel It ended with the deaths of 1,200 people and about 250 hostages, including the couple.

Noa Argamani, who was captured less than a week before his 26th birthday, spent 245 days in captivity in Gaza. Following her release, the two men captured in the video holding Argamani’s boyfriend were tracked down by Israeli intelligence officers and killed in separate air strikes.

Current and former Israeli officials said the men were removed from a list of thousands of names maintained by an Israeli task force to kill or capture anyone who planned or participated in the October 7 attack. Hundreds of people have been delisted in one of the most personal and high-tech targeting campaigns in the history of warfare. Campaign continues amidst demand for war with Iran stop fire Agreement in Gaza.

No participant is considered too insignificant – even the man who drove the tractor through the border fence that day. Nearly two years after violating the border, a tractor driver was identified, tracked down and killed in an airstrike as he walked down a narrow urban street in Gaza, according to footage released by the Israeli military.

This campaign extends from the common man to the top leaders of Hamas. On Friday, Israel killed Azzedine al-Haddad, one of the last surviving senior militants from the group’s military leadership who planned the October 7 attacks. He was the military commander of Hamas in Gaza from 2025.

“The IDF will continue to pursue our enemies, attack them, and hold accountable all who participated in the October 7 massacre,” Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir said Saturday after Haddad’s killing was confirmed.

The militants who filmed their October 7 exploits on phones or GoPro cameras to share on social media, or who called home to brag, learned too late the degree of Israel’s surveillance skills and willingness to retaliate.

According to current and former Israeli security officials, security forces execute people without trial if they find at least two pieces of evidence indicating that they participated in crimes during the October 7 attacks. These officials said that military intelligence agents and the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, pay attention to videos of militants posted on social media.

Agents run the images through facial recognition programs to check names, officials said, and examine intercepted phone calls. They look at location data from cell tower logs and interrogate Gazan captives to find out who did what.

Despite a ceasefire with Hamas in October and the release of the last surviving hostages, names have continued to be struck off the list. Israel says it hits targets that allegedly pose a threat, such as approaching the front lines or planning an attack.

On April 12, it was Hamas platoon commander Ali Sami Mohammed Shakra whom Israel’s military alleges took part in the deadly attack on the Nova music festival and helped capture four hostages, including American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

After Shakra was killed, the army released a screenshot of the October 7 video, which shows his head poking out of a car window near the abduction site.

Three days earlier, the army said it had killed Islamic Jihad terrorist Abd al-Rahman Ammar Hassan Khudari for his alleged role in the attack. Kibbutz Nir Oz, Where at least a quarter of the inhabitants were killed or abducted.

A Hamas official said Tuesday that the campaign was “nothing but an extension of the policy of extrajudicial executions and systematic killing that Israel has pursued against the Palestinian people for decades.”

Hundreds of Gazans remain in Israeli custody awaiting trial on charges of participation in the October 7 attacks. Parliament recently passed a bill to set up a special military tribunal to try them.

“In the Middle East, revenge is an important part of the discussion. It’s about how seriously anyone in your environment views you,” said Michael Milstein, a former senior Israeli military intelligence official on Palestinian affairs. “Unfortunately that’s the language of this neighborhood.”

Argamani’s father, Yaakov Argamani, said his only wish was that his daughter be freed by Hamas in time so she could see her terminally ill mother once more. They said, ”The Almighty granted our wish.” Noa Argamani was released on his father’s birthday, and he and his mother lived together for three weeks.

Yaakov Argamani praised the Israeli military for calling it a war for the survival of the Jewish people. He said he was not informed about the murder of the two people who had helped kidnap his daughter.

“Revenge, I don’t know what it involves,” he said of it. “I’m telling you honestly, I don’t know what was added to it.”

The campaign is centered in Gaza but has influenced Hamas leaders in Lebanon and Iran. This echoes Israel’s killing of a dozen Palestinians responsible for the murder of 11 of its athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior Shin Bet official, said, “The clear message to all future enemies is to think again about the cost of this type of terrorist operation.”

Since the October ceasefire, the task force has been reduced to a handful of operatives who monitor targets and provide information to the military command responsible for operations in Gaza.

Some Israeli security officials say the killings deter Palestinians from joining terrorist groups. Others say the campaign could push some people to join armed groups, especially without a political path to resolving the underlying issue of Palestinian statehood, said Tahani Mustafa, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Mustafa said that Hamas’s recruitment numbers have increased during the war. “It has nothing to do with dogma and everything to do with necessity,” he said. “It’s either resist or die.”

Rachel Vanlandingham, a national-security-law expert and former judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force, said armies at war can legally kill combatants, including members of non-state groups like Hamas, even under a ceasefire.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with prioritizing people on a target list, as long as they’re combative,” VanLandingham said. Israel’s campaign “seems retaliatory,” he said, but the law does not permit it.

He said that, although there are few legal limits on killing belligerents in wartime, civilians suspected of crimes should be caught and prosecuted. Extrajudicial killing of civilians is a war crime, he said, and the challenge is to determine who counts as a combatant or a civilian.

Israel’s military said international law allows it to attack civilians taking part in hostilities. Determining who is included on the list may take days, months or years, depending on the case.

Before the current ceasefire, members of the Shin Bet, Army and Air Force gathered in a war room to identify, search for and attack targets. Former officials familiar with details of the operation said the task force tracked the daily movements of the terrorist’s friends and family, hoping to spot hidden targets.

“It’s really a very difficult task to track down those people,” said Guy Chen, a former Shin Bet official. “You need to know exactly where this guy is located at that very moment.”

One of the first big goals was Saleh al-Arouri, top Hamas operative in Lebanon. He returned on New Year’s Day 2024 from a trip to Türkiye to the Beirut office he left after the October 7 attacks. Arab officials said members of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah had warned Arouri to remain quiet and away from cellphones, which can be hacked to track locations.

Instead, Arouri called a meeting with six Hamas officials, and Israeli planes fired guided missiles that hit the office, Israeli officials said, killing all seven people. Arab officials said Lebanese investigators found he had phones and a laptop, all connected to the Internet.

Six months later, Israel kills Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh bomb hidden in his room At the guesthouse of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran.

“It will take time, as it did after Munich,” Mossad director David Barnia said in 2024 at the funeral of Zvi Zamir, who led the Israeli spy agency at the time of the Munich killings. “But our hands will reach them, wherever they are.”

Over the following months, the NILI task force killed Hamas fighters paragliding over Israel, others attacking border communities, and participants in the killing of hundreds of revelers on October 7. Nova Music FestivalWhere Argamani and her lover were kidnapped.

A security official said that the Shin Bet gave priority to families who could find solace from the killing, which the intelligence service described as “therapy for the soul.”

Hamas has refused to disarm as required by the ceasefire agreement. reasserted his authority Throughout Gaza. both sides are preparing to return to battleBecause Israel continues to remove names from the list.

Early on 4 February, Israeli soldiers came under fire while patrolling the Yellow Line, which divides them from Hamas-controlled territory – a violation of the ceasefire. Later that day, Hamas operative Muhammad Issam Hassan al-Habil was traveling in a car through the debris of northwestern Gaza.

The Israeli military and Shin Bet said they learned through interrogation that Habil was responsible for the death of Noa Marciano, a female soldier who was taken hostage from a base near Gaza and died in captivity. Before Habeel could reach his destination, a drone fired a missile at his car.

On Friday, three Israeli jet fighters dropped 13 bombs on an apartment in Gaza City and a car trying to escape from there. The group said the attacks killed Hamas military commander Haddad, his wife, his daughter and several civilians. Israel said it was working to rebuild Hamas’ military capabilities.

According to those captured, Haddad helped keep the hostages, and his killing was celebrated by some freed captives.

“He planned the 7th, murdered my friends, many other loved ones, planned my kidnapping and kept me in the Hamas tunnels,” Emily Damiri said in an Instagram post on Friday. The 29-year-old dual Israeli-British citizen was abducted from her home and held for almost 500 days in an underground tunnel system dug by Hamas beneath Gaza.

“This is a very important closing of the circle for many people,” he wrote.

Aviva Seagal, 64, was kidnapped along with her husband on October 7 and spent 51 days in captivity. Despite her persecution at the hands of Hamas – she waited nearly 500 days for her husband’s release – Seagal said she is opposed to any more killings.

“I am alive,” he said, “and that is enough for me.”

Write to Dove Lieber dov.lieber@wsj.com