Since the start of Israel's war against Hamas, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) have eliminated several top commanders who they believe were behind the October 07, 2023 Massacre. The latest assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh put the intensifying Israeli offensive under the spotlight. Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli raid on his residence in Iran, Hamas has earlier said.
The following are some of the top Hamas commanders and officials eliminated by the Israeli forces since October 2023.
13.10.2023: Murad Abu Murad: Murad Abu Murad, 45, the head of Hamas’ air force, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City on Oct. 13. The Israeli military claimed Murad “took a big part in directing terrorists during the massacre” on Oct. 7.
14.10.2023: Ali Qadhi: Ali Qadhi, a commander in the Nukhba special forces unit who the IDF said led one of the assaults against towns in southern Israel, was killed in a drone strike on Oct. 14.
14.10.2023: Billal Al Kedra: Billal Al Kedra, a commander of the elite southern Khan Yunis Nukhba forces, was taken out by an airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 14. The IDF said at the time that Al Kedra, 37, was the mastermind of the massacre in Kibbutz Nirim that left dozens of Israeli civilians dead.
16.10.2023: Osama Mazini: Osama Mazini, 57, a former senior Palestinian leader and Hamas’ one-time chief hostage negotiator, was killed in an airstrike on Oct. 16, with the Israeli air force claiming that he “directed terrorist activities against Israel.”
17.10.2023: Ayman Nofal: Ayman Nofal, 49, a senior commander in Hamas’ military wing known as the Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in an airstrike targeting the Bureij refugee camp.
31.10.2023: Ibrahim Biari: Ibrahim Biari, commander of Hamas’ Central Jabaliya Battalion operating out of the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, was killed by IDF fighter jets on Oct. 31. The Israeli military said Biari was responsible for sending some of the terrorist units to slaughter Israelis on Oct. 7.
14.11.2023: Ahmed Ghandour: Ahmed Ghandour, commander of Hamas’ Northern Brigade for at least 18 years, was killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting an underground tunnel in Gaza on Nov. 14.
02.01.2024: Saleh Al Arouri: Saleh Al Arouri, a deputy Hamas leader and a founding commander of its military wing, Al Qassam Brigades, died in a Jan. 2 IDF drone strike in his office in Beirut, Lebanon, where he was living at the time.
10.03.2024: Marwan Issa: Issa, nicknamed the “Shadow Man”, the deputy head of Hamas' military wing, the highest-ranking Hamas official eliminated by Israel since the war began. He was at the top of IDF’s most-wanted list together with Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, who are suspected to have orchestrated the Oct. 7 rampage.
13.03.2024: Hadi Mustafa: Hadi Mustafa, described by the Israeli military as a “significant operative” in Hamas’ unit responsible for international terrorist activities targeting Israelis and Jews, was killed by a drone strike while sitting in a car outside the city of Tyr in southern Lebanon.
27.05.2024: The commander of Hamas’s West Bank headquarters Yassin Rabia, and Khaled Najjar, another senior member of the unit, were killed in the strike in the Tel Sultan area of northwestern Rafah, the IDF says.
20.06.2024: Israeli military said that they have eliminated Ahmed Al-Sawarka, who led sniper operations in the Beit Hanoun area and played a role in "terrorist" acts against Israeli forces, was killed by a military aircraft.
12.07.2024: IDF said that they have killed Ayman Showadeh, the senior Hamas commander involved in masterminding the Oct. 7 attack against Israel was killed in a recent Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. The IDF said in a statement that the slain, named Ayman Showadeh, was a deputy commander of Hamas' Shejaiya Battalion in the current conflict and formerly a key operative in Hamas' operations headquarters.
SOME OF MOSSAD FAMOUS OPERATIONS AND ASSASSINATIONS:
Adolf Eichmann (1960-1962) Capture, trial and hanging of arch-Nazi: Adolf Eichmann ran Hitler's Final Solution that led to the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Though he was initially captured by Allied forces after World War II, he escaped and eventually fled to Argentina. Around a dozen Mossad agents were involved in the surveillance and capture operation. Pictures of “Klement” were compared to Eichmann with a key matching feature being the shape of his ears. Mossad agents nabbed and whisked off Eichman into a car on his way home from work. They examined his body and found the expected known scars. Interrogated repeatedly after giving false names, he eventually admitted his real name was Eichmann and then asked for a glass of wine. Next, he was flown to Israel on an El Al aircraft which had brought an official Israeli delegation to Buenos Aires as cover. Eichmann, heavily sedated and dressed in an El Al uniform, was passed off as a sick airline employee. Eichmann was tried in Israel and hung in 1962.
OPERATION WRATH OF GOD ( 1972-1988): Mossad famous covert assassination operation was carried out to avenge the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants in September 1972 at the Munich Olympics. A wave of assassinations of suspected Black September operatives across Europe then ensued.
On October 16, 1972, two Mossad agents shot PLO Italy representative Abdel Wael Zwaiter around a dozen times at his residence after he came home from dinner in Rome. The hit was the first of a campaign of retaliation in which dozens of those directly or indirectly involved in the Munich Olympics attack were assassinated.
On April 9, 1973, the Mossad and the IDF launched a joint operation in Beirut involving a small fleet of missile boats and patrol boats which travelled to an empty Lebanese beach. They took out Mohammad Yusuf al-Najjar (Abu Yusuf), head of Fatah's intelligence arm, which ran Black September; Kamal Adwan, who directed PLO actions inside Israel; and Kamal Nassir, the PLO spokesman. Ehud Barak, who would later serve as prime minister, led the commando raid.
OPERATION ENTEBBE HOSTAGE RESCUE OPERATION (1976): Mossad, in coordination with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), executed a daring rescue operation, successfully freeing the hostages. CODENAMED OPERATION THUNDERBOLT, also known as Operation Entebbe or Operation Jonathan. Operation Entebbe was a hostage rescue mission by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976. On June 27, 1976, an Air France Airbus A300 with 248 passengers was hijacked by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO) and two members of the German Revolutionary Cells. The hijackers had demanded the release of 40 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel and 13 prisoners in four other countries in exchange for the hostages.
ABU JIHAD (1988): Khalil al-Wazir, better known in the Arab world as Abu Jihad, was a key figure in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), helping found Fatah in the late 1950s. For years, he was the effective deputy to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. He was shot dead by Israeli agents in an audacious commando raid in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, in 1988. Israel alleged his Involvement in multiple attacks against Israeli targets.
OPERATION SPHINX: Mossad played a key role in the smuggling of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel in the early 1980s, rescuing them from famine and persecution.
FATHI SHAQAQI (1995): Leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israel alleged he was responsible for many attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. He was assassinated by Mossad agents in Malta on 26th October 1995, leading to a weakening of the PIJ until its resurgence after the Arab Spring.
YAHYA AYYASH (1996): Elusive Islamic militant mastermind behind a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings nicknamed "The Engineer", was killed in the PLO-ruled Gaza. He died on January 5, 1996, when his cellular phone exploded in his hands. Palestinians blamed Israel, which declined to take responsibility. Hamas retaliated in four suicide attacks that killed 59 people in three Israeli cities over nine days in February and March 1996.
AHMED YASSIN (2004): Israel killed the quadriplegic co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed, in a helicopter missile strike on March 22, 2004, as he left a mosque in Gaza City. Israel attempted to kill him in 2003 while he was at the house of a Hamas member in Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians marched in Gaza shouting calls of revenge and threatening to "send death to every home" in Israel. His death led to widespread protests and condemnation from the Palestinian territories and the broader Muslim world marked a significant escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, underlining the deep-seated tensions and the challenges of achieving peace in the region.
ABDEL-AZIZ AL-RANTISI (2004): An Israeli helicopter missile strike on a car in Gaza City killed Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi on April 17, 2004. Two bodyguards were also killed. The Hamas leadership went into hiding and the identity of Rantissi’s successor was kept secret. His assassination came shortly after he had taken over as Hamas leader in Gaza following the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
ADNAN AL-GHOUL (2004): Hamas master bomber was killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on Oct. 21, 2004. Ghoul was number 2 in the military wing of Hamas and known as the "Father of the Qassam" rocket, a makeshift missile frequently fired into Israeli towns.
IMAD MUGHNIYEH (2008): The assassination of arch-terrorist - February 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyeh was possibly the most wanted terrorist by the Mossad and Israel for the last few decades. He had masterminded audacious terror attacks, especially car bombings, all over the world, was a leading military commander for Hezbollah and connected Iran to the Lebanese group and a range of other groups. According to foreign reports, the Mossad tried to assassinate multiple times and kept missing until February 2008. According to the reports, on February 12, 2008, Mughniyeh pulled into the parking lot, but there were other officials with him who the Mossad was not prepared to take out at the time. However, later that night he returned to his car alone. This time the Mossad allegedly did not miss and he was “erased” from the Iran-Hezbollah-Israel wars board.
THE SYRIAN NUCLEAR REACTOR SAGA - 2006-2007: In December 2006, a top Syrian official, allegedly Ibrahim Othman, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, arrived in a European city (there is a debate about which one) under a false identity. Around a dozen Mossad agents allegedly split into teams to perform surveillance at the airport and the hotel, to bug his room and acquire intelligence and potentially assassinate him, were dispatched. According to a report by David Makovsky in the New Yorker and other reports, some combination of the Mossad and IDF special forces later penetrated Syria and collected soil samples and other physical evidence from the nuclear site. The materials allegedly gathered by the Mossad and IDF intelligence eventually led to the successful IDF air strike destroying the Syrian nuclear facility on September 6, 2007.
THE SYRIAN NUCLEAR REACTOR SAGA CONTINUED – assassinating its director Muhammad Suleiman on August 1, 2008.On August 1, 2008, he collapsed and died on a beach near the Syrian resort of Tartus where he was vacationing. The hit was attributed to sniper shots to the head and neck, fired from a yacht set far offshore, with many saying the sniper’s handiwork was Mossad-style.
NIZAR RAYYAN (2009) : A cleric widely regarded as one of Hamas's most hardline political leaders, had called for renewed suicide bombings inside Israel. Two of his four wives and seven of his children were also killed in the bombing in Jabalya refugee camp on January 1, 2009.
STUXNET CYBER ATTACK (JUNE 2010): This malware, targeted Iran's nuclear program, specifically its uranium enrichment facilities, causing significant damage. The Stuxnet computer virus, allegedly developed by Israel and the United States, was detected in computers at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The virus then spread to other facilities. By September, 30,000 computers across at least 14 facilities—including the Natanz facility—were reportedly infected. The virus caused the engines in IR-1 centrifuges to increase their speed and eventually explode. At least 1,000 centrifuges of the 9,000 installed at Natanz were destroyed, the Institute for Science and International Security estimated. After conducting investigations, Iran blamed Israel and the United States for the virus.
ASSASSINATION OF MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH (2010): In January 2010, Hamas military commander Mahmoud, Al Mabhouh was assassinated in a Dubai Hotel room by Mossad.
MUHAMMAD AL-ZAWARI (2016): Hit on Hamas-Hezbollah weapons expert in Tunisia – December 15, 2016: On December 15, 2016, Muhammad al-Zawari was gunned down near his residence in Sfax, Tunisia in a hail of bullets in a drive-by hit. Zawari was an aeronautical engineer who manufactured drones for Hamas, and possibly also for Hezbollah.
FADI MUHAMMAD AL-BATSH (2018): Hit on Hamas weapons expert in Malaysia - April 22, 2018 -Fadi Muhammad al-Batsh was on his way to a mosque in Kuala Lampur in Malaysia on Saturday when he was gunned down in a drive-by motorcycle shooting viewed as similar to the Tunisia hit. Batsh has been identified as a Hamas electrical engineering expert both for designing drones and rockets.
MOHSEN FAKHRIZADEH, a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist (2020): Nov. 27, 2020: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist, was assassinated in a roadside attack about 40 miles east of Tehran. Western and Israeli intelligence had long suspected that Fakhrizadeh was the father of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program. He was often compared to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic bomb. He kept a low profile for most of his career. His name was not widely known even in Iran until he was sanctioned by the United Nations in 2007 and the United States in 2008.
SALEH AL-AROURI (2024): An Israeli drone strike on Beirut's southern suburbs of Dahiyeh killed Deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri on January 2, 2024. Arouri was also the founder of the Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades.
ISMAIL HANIYEH ( 2024 July): Haniyeh was assassinated in the early hours of 31 st morning in Iran, the Palestinian militant group said. Iran's Revolutionary Guards confirmed the death of Haniyeh, hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for the country's new president, and said it was investigating.
