A copy of the memo obtained by The New York Times and reviewed by Israeli experts is dated Aug. 24, 2022. According to seven Israeli officials who described the document and associated materials to The Times, the memo calls for fighters to attack both soldiers and civilian communities, to set neighborhoods ablaze and to film and broadcast violent acts to sow fear and destabilize Israel. The officials said the memo contradicts public claims by Hamas leaders that civilians were not deliberate targets.
The memo, an image stored on a computer that was not connected to any network and therefore harder for Israeli signals intelligence to detect, includes explicit operational language. It orders fighters to enter residential neighborhoods and to set them alight “with gasoline or diesel from a tanker,” and states that “two or three operations, in which an entire neighborhood, kibbutz, or something similar will be burned, must be prepared,” according to the copy reviewed by The Times.
Hours of intercepted communications recorded during the Oct. 7 assault, collected that day by Unit 8200 (Israel’s military signals intelligence unit) and shared with The Times, appear to echo the memo’s language. In one intercept just before 10 am on Oct. 7, a Gaza City commander identified in the recordings as Abu Muhammed told subordinates, “Start setting homes on fire,” adding: “Burn, burn. I want the whole kibbutz to be in flames.” Around the same time a commander in Jabaliya, known in the intercepts as Abu al-Abed, said: “Set fire to anything.”
The intercepts, which The Times reviewed and translated, include hours of communications among commanders and fighters across at least eight groups. They record orders to “slit their throats,” to “stomp on the heads of soldiers,” and to “take a lot of hostages,” along with calls by some commanders to film the violence and broadcast it to the Arab world to inspire participation outside Gaza.
Israeli officials said document examination specialists compared the handwriting in the memo with other known samples from Yahya Sinwar, who Israeli authorities say was killed in October 2024, and found similarities. Sima Ankona, formerly a document examiner with the Israeli police, told The Times that the handwriting matched samples held by Israeli authorities, including a 2018 note Sinwar wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a 1989 police statement bearing his signature.
The memo and the intercepts have been studied by Israeli military bodies and think tanks. A confidential report by the Gazit Institute, affiliated with Israeli military intelligence, described the planning and execution of Oct. 7 as featuring “acts of ‘extraordinary brutality’” and said the goal was to cause “great turmoil in the country and the military,” according to material reviewed by The Times.
The revelations come amid broader scrutiny inside Israel of the intelligence and security failures surrounding Oct. 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, according to Israeli officials. Hamas and allied militants killed roughly 1,200 people and abducted about 250 others that day; in the war that followed, Israel has carried out extensive military operations in Gaza that officials say have killed tens of thousands and displaced large portions of the population.
The memo outlines operational methods, bulldozers breaking through the Gaza-Israel fence, multiple waves of attackers, and instructions aimed at maximizing shock value, but it does not explicitly mention kidnapping or killing civilians. Still, its calls for entering and burning residential areas mirror intercepted battlefield orders and, according to Israeli officials, show that part of the operation’s intent was to terrorize civilian populations.
In the Oct. 7 intercepts, commanders also urged fighters to film their actions. “Document the scenes of horror, now, and broadcast them on TV channels to the whole world,” a Gaza City commander called Abu al-Baraa told operatives near Kibbutz Sa’ad, according to the translated recordings.
