Israeli intelligence has formed a crack unit to hunt down the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks, echoing the bloody campaign to eliminate the Black September terrorists behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, it emerged.
The new specialist squad will specifically target the Hamas members involved in the initial bloody incursions which cost more than 1,400 Israeli lives.
Intelligence sources said it will be targeting Hamas’s 2,500-strong Nukhba commando division which led the October 7 massacre, together with those, both in and outside Gaza, who were involved in its direction and planning.
Experts said the involvement of Mossad was particularly “significant”.
The targeting of Hamas’s leadership overseas would be “much more difficult” and would need political sign-off at cabinet level, he said.
“It will go on for years.”
One media outlet in Jerusalem said: “The unit is dedicated to hunting down and eliminating every individual who played a role in the massacre.”
The initiative is being compared to Operation Wrath of God, a covert mission authorised by Golda Meir, the then Israeli prime minister, in 1972 to assassinate those involved in the Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were murdered.
After its initiation, more than a dozen Black September and Palestinian Liberation Organisation operatives were killed across Europe and Middle East.
Some 20-35 individuals were placed on the initial kill list and the operation ran for more than 20 years.
The effort to neutralise those responsible for Munich “required ongoing intelligence and operational efforts across the globe and political backing in a multiyear campaign”, he said.
