It wasn't just Hamas... I wrote an article (in Dutch) about all the other armed groups, apart from the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, that participated in the October 7, 2023 incursions and attacks on Israeli soil (1/15) hln.be/israel-palesti…
With what we know now, it seems clear that the 'Joint Operations Room of Palestian Resistance Factions' exercises played a crucial role in preparing for what happened last weekend (2/15)
This 'Joint Operations Room' was never really taken seriously on the Israeli side and until last month Israeli media described their military manoeuvres as an "annual propaganda ritual" (3/15)
But looking back at the images of those exercises, openly appearing since 2020, there is a clear focus on training the use of tunnels, capturing buildings and taking hostages (4/15)
And looking into the individual social media channels of the various armed groups that are part of this Joint Operation Room, it becomes clear that they were all actively involved in the October 7 attacks (5/15)
Here's a picture posted by the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades (Popular Resistance Committees) before noon that day already, showing the belongings of an Israeli soldier, including his drivers license, his bank card and his ID (6/15)
Here's a screen grab from a video posted by the Al-Quds Brigades (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) showing how they went door to door in a civilian settlement. There's another fragment in which they force an elderly man to take place on the back seat of a car (7/15)
In this video posted by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Nidal Al-Amoudi Brigades, a militant puts his foot on the head of a corpse showing African features and wearing civilian clothes, suggesting that it wasn't a soldier (8/15)
Side note: we chose not to show the victim, but blurring the perpetrators was done by the initial distributors of all the footage that we show (9/15)
Another video from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Nidal Al-Amoudi Brigades shows a militant sitting on top of a heavily bloodied civilian in the backseat of a car and restraining him with a kalashnikov-type weapon (10/15)
Here's footage from the National Resistance Brigades (beloning to the communist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), showing how they captured a checkpoint on the Gaza border, but also dragged away a dead man dressed in civilian clothes (11/15)
We also found a video of the same National Resistance Brigades in which one of their militants shoots an already defenseless victim on the ground with an assault rifle (12/15)
The most disturbing images, however, were on the channel of the Mujahideen Brigades. They show the mutilated bodies of Israeli soldiers, one of whom has been beheaded. We deliberately blurred the image (13/15)
It is not clear from the images how the beheading happened. But the fact that the body is still intact suggests that the mutilation was not caused by an explosion, but wittingly inflicted (14/15)
This is just some of the available evidence that virtually every armed group present in the Gaza Strip was involved in the attacks. Which points to a disturbing radicalization, whereby it is by no means only Hamas prepared to commit the cruellest forms of violence (15/15)
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