The IDF this week revealed the crucial activities of its Military Intelligence Unit 504, whose Arabic-speaking soldiers are operating in Gaza alongside the combat units, questioning Hamas captives and supplying the intelligence to Israeli forces.
Following are videos three interrogation sessions carried out by the Unit on November 12, 2023. They are, to say the least, very instructive.
Session 1 (name not revealed)
Session 2 (Hamuda Riad Asad Shamalah)
Session 3 (Abdelrahaman Alaa Ibrahim Samur)
“So far, we have apprehended over 300 terrorists from the terrorist organizations during the ground operation who were brought into Israeli territory for further interrogations,” said a senior official in Unit 504.
“The information that emerges from the interrogations of the terrorists is very valuable, leading to elimination of operatives and the preservation of the security of our forces.”
At the beginning of the war, the main effort of the 504 Unit was led by the unit’s soldiers, field interrogators and desk interrogators.
While fighting against terrorists in Israeli communities in southern Israel, dozens of soldiers and field interrogators joined the IDF’s combat battalions with the goal of eliminating terrorists, assisting the evacuation of the residents from the area and extending the findings emerging from the field.
In parallel, a temporary field facility was opened in the south to conduct interrogations in real time, which within a few days became a permanent facility for interrogations.
As part of the terrorist interrogations that have been going on since the start of the war, 300 terrorists of various terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip have been interrogated, the official said.
The captured terrorists have given the locations of underground terrorism tunnels, warehouses and weapons, along with exposing the enemy’s methods of operation, and the enemy’s assimilation efforts within the civilian population.
The IDF said that throughout the war, the unit has been operating with a wide variety of tools and methods to achieve four main goals:
1. to support the ground operation,
2. collect intelligence to confirm targets,
3. to lead, and
4. to influence the effort to evacuate the civilian population to the south of the Gaza Strip.
As part of the effort to evacuate the civilian population from northern Gaza, the unit has operated with a variety of operational tools which helped the unit make over 30,000 phone calls, send over ten million text messages, send over nine million voice messages, as well as distribute about four million leaflets from the air and land, calling on the population to evacuate.
The evacuation effort allows the IDF to broadly strike Hamas infrastructure in the area.
Using accurate human intelligence provided by Unit 504, more than 300 newfound enemy targets in the Gaza Strip were confirmed, and more than 100 targets were struck as part of the target production effort.
“We received thousands of phone calls from Gazans, on a scale never seen before in the unit,” the official said.
“It is evident that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not satisfied with the barbaric conduct of Hamas; the ordinary civilian understands that Hamas is bringing disaster to the residents of Gaza from which it will be difficult for them to recover.”
On October 7th, the field interrogators of the unit joined the fighting forces in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, thus constituting a reliable primary source for the plans of the Hamas terrorist organization.
“So far, we have apprehended more than 300 terrorists affiliated with the terrorist organizations during the ground operation, who were brought into Israeli territory for further investigation.
“Each and every interrogation leads to the release of new locations and the human intelligence that emerges from the Gaza Strip,” the official noted.
“The interrogations of the terrorists in cooperation with the Shin Bet are an inseparable layer of the complete intelligence picture. The information that emerges in the interrogations of the terrorists is very valuable; it leads to the elimination of operatives and the preservation of the security of our forces.”
