After the attack on October 7, 2023, Israel began an operation clearly not intended for just a few months of war. The task is to identify by name those who broke through the border, participated in the killings and kidnappings of Israelis, assisted in the attack, and in some cases later held the kidnapped in the Gaza Strip.
For this, a special structure was created NILI — a joint unit of the IDF and Shin Bet.
As of August 9, 2026, Israeli media report about 2,800 people killed who were on the NILI list. About 1,200 of them were killed directly during the repulsion of the invasion on October 7, 2023.
And here it is immediately important to draw the line of proven facts: this does not mean that NILI personnel personally eliminated 2,800 people. The unit itself appeared after the attack. Its work is to identify a person, prove their involvement, find them, and create an intelligence basis for a subsequent operation. The direct strike is often carried out by the IDF and the Israeli Air Force.
So it is more accurate to say not “NILI killed 2,800 terrorists,” but: 2,800 people from the list compiled by Israel of participants and those involved in the crimes of October 7 are already dead.
“The Eternity of Israel will not lie”
The abbreviation NILI — ניל”י — stands for נצח ישראל לא ישקר — “Netzach Yisrael lo yeshaker”, an expression from the First Book of Samuel, which can be approximately translated as “The Eternity of Israel will not lie.”
The name simultaneously refers to the historical Jewish intelligence organization NILI from the time of World War I.
The creation of a new structure with this name was reported by the Israeli press as early as October 2023, literally a few weeks after the massacre.
The initial task was extremely specific: to find those who entered Israeli territory on October 7, killed people, participated in kidnappings, and then managed to return to Gaza.
Later, the list expanded.
It included not only the direct participants of the invasion but also people involved in planning the attack, holding hostages, and crimes against them.
This is important for another reason. NILI cannot be equated with the entire Israeli campaign against the Hamas leadership.
A Hamas commander can be eliminated because of his current military role regardless of what he did on October 7. NILI works with a different logic: the personal connection of a specific person with the attack on October 7 and subsequent crimes against the kidnapped.
The terrorists themselves left Israel with a huge evidence base
The investigation of October 7 has a feature that was practically absent in past wars.
A huge part of the evidence was left by the attackers themselves.
They filmed what was happening on phones and GoPros, photographed the dead, recorded kidnappings, posted videos on social networks, and sent materials to other people.
What was supposed to be propaganda and a demonstration of “victory” ultimately turned into a huge intelligence archive.
Israel gained the ability to compare:
- faces of people in videos and photos;
- recordings from phones and cameras;
- mobile device data;
- intercepted communications;
- testimonies of detainees;
- testimonies of freed hostages;
- Shin Bet’s agent information;
- military intelligence data;
- documents and electronic materials captured in Gaza.
According to the published description of NILI’s work, facial recognition systems and artificial intelligence tools are also used, allowing the consolidation of a huge amount of disparate information.
But the key here is not the AI itself.
A person should not end up in such a system just because an algorithm found a similar face.
It is necessary to compare different sources and establish not just the identity, but also the role of a specific person on October 7.
What did he do?
Where was he?
In which group did he come?
Whom did he kidnap?
Did he participate in killings?
Where did he return after the attack?
With whom did he maintain contact?
And only after this does the next part of the work begin.
A kidnapping video can lead to a specific person two years later
NAnews has repeatedly returned to the video evidence of October 7.
In May 2024, NAnews published a video of the kidnapping of Israeli observers from the Nahal Oz base. Part of these frames was shot directly by the terrorists themselves.
At that time, they were primarily perceived as a document of the crime.
Now another side of such recordings becomes visible.
There are faces on the video.
Voices.
Clothing.
Weapons.
Transport.
Other group members.
Sometimes — a specific house, road, or area.
All this allows returning to the recording months later not only as evidence of what happened but also as intelligence material.
Later, NAnews reported on the documentary reconstruction of the events of October 7 in Andrey Tsaplienko’s film “Very Near East”, where recordings of eyewitnesses, military personnel, and the attackers themselves were pieced together into a complete picture of what happened.
Now Israel is doing another thing with part of this digital trace: translating the event from the collective concept of “Hamas attack” back to specific people.
Not just “who attacked Nir Oz.”
But who exactly entered this house.
Who was near the car.
Who led the person out.
Who was driving.
Who held the weapon.
After establishing identity, the waiting begins
Finding a name is not enough.
The next task is to establish the current whereabouts of the person.
NILI officers told Channel 12 how detailed the surveillance sometimes becomes.
Intelligence finds out where the person lives, whom they communicate with, where they go to pray, when they appear in certain places, and even at what time they go shopping.
And this can continue for months.
Why not strike immediately after detection?
Because intelligence confirmation of identity does not automatically mean permission to use force.
His current status, surrounding people, the possibility of an operation, and legal restrictions are taken into account.
Some participants in the attack were not destroyed at all — they were detained.
According to data published in July 2026, approximately 300 suspected participants in the October 7 attack and people associated with crimes against hostages were in Israeli custody.
Therefore, the real NILI scheme is more complex than the phrase “found and eliminated”:
identification — verification of involvement — search — surveillance — assessment of operation feasibility — detention or strike.
The Bibas family: names instead of faceless statistics
The most important part of the NILI story begins where the numbers disappear.
Because 2,800 is statistics.
But for the family of the deceased, there is no “attack participant number 1487.”
There is a person who entered their home.
Or took the child.
Or put the hostage in the car.
One of these people was Asad Abu Sharia, the leader of the “Mujahideen Brigades,” a group that operated jointly with Hamas.
According to Israeli security forces, he participated in the invasion of Kibbutz Nir Oz and was associated with the kidnapping of the Bibas family members.
Shiri Bibas and her young sons Ariel and Kfir became one of the main symbols of the tragedy of Israeli hostages.
Abu Sharia was eliminated by an Israeli strike in Gaza City on June 7, 2025.
Another figure is Mohammed Hassan Mohammed Awad. Israeli security forces claimed that he commanded the kidnapping of Shiri, Kfir, and Ariel Bibas and was apparently involved in their murder.
He was eliminated on April 4, 2025 in the northern Gaza Strip.
The wording “apparently” is crucial here. This is how the degree of established involvement was described by Israeli security forces, so it cannot be turned into a categorical statement.
The kidnapper of Yarden Bibas was also found
Separately, Israel identified the person involved in the kidnapping of Ariel and Kfir’s father — Yarden Bibas.
He turned out to be a militant of Hamas’s military wing Jihad Kamal Salem Najjar.
He was eliminated on August 10, 2025.
After confirming his death, Yarden Bibas spoke of a partial “closure of the circle.”
This reaction explains what is sometimes lost in military terminology.
For the state, it is about a destroyed target.
For an intelligence officer — about a closed line in the database.
And for the person whom this militant dragged to Gaza, this news has a completely different meaning.
Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or
Another identified participant of October 7 is Ahmad Ibrahim Rajab Shaar.
Israel directly linked him to the abduction of Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or from the Nova festival.
The footage of Noa’s abduction became one of the most famous images of October 7: the girl is taken away on a motorcycle, she reaches out to Avinatan, who is being led nearby by terrorists.
But behind the world-famous video, specific names later emerged.
Shaar was destroyed by an Israeli strike on August 22, 2025. His role was confirmed later after additional intelligence verification.
And this very well illustrates the principle of NILI.
It’s not just about finding a person who resembles a figure from the video.
First, gather enough information to link a specific name to a specific episode.
Nahal Oz: the search continued even after the abduction of the observers.
Another figure associated with the Nahal Oz base is Haitham Hazem Hijazi Rajab.
Israeli military established his involvement in the attack on the base, where soldiers, including female observers, were killed and abducted.
He was eliminated shortly before the ceasefire took effect in January 2025.
And here arises an especially important connection with those videos that Israel received after October 7.
For relatives, these frames were proof of what happened to their daughters.
For society, a testimony of the massacre.
For intelligence, also an opportunity to later identify people who were near the hostages at a certain moment.
Inbar Haiman and the person who filmed the murders himself.
Another example is Jalal Karaan.
According to the IDF and Shin Bet, he was involved in the murder of Inbar Haiman, who was abducted from the Nova festival.
In addition, Israeli military stated that Karaan killed two more Israeli citizens, filmed the events and distributed these recordings on the internet.
That is, the person essentially created part of the evidence base of his own involvement.
Karaan was eliminated in 2025.
And this is perhaps one of the most vivid examples of the entire logic of NILI: the image of the crime did not disappear in the flow of social networks. It was preserved, studied, linked to a specific person — and the search for this person continued even after the direct battles of October 7 had long ended.
Even the bodies of fallen soldiers — separate investigations.
NILI deals not only with episodes involving civilians.
Husam Shafai, a militant of the Hamas battalion ‘East Khan Yunis’, participated in the invasion of Israel and, according to the IDF, was involved in the abduction of the bodies of fallen soldiers — the commander of the Southern Brigade of the Gaza Division Colonel Asaf Hamami, Senior Sergeant Tomer Ahimas, and Sergeant Kiril Brodsky.
Shafai was eliminated by an Israeli strike on July 14, 2026.
And here is another important detail.
The IDF indicated that Shafai continued terrorist activities even after October 7 and posed a threat to Israeli soldiers.
That is, participation in the 2023 attack allowed him to be identified as a figure, but the decision to strike was also related to his subsequent activities.
For accuracy, this distinction is fundamental.
Initially, there were 2,561. A month later — already 2,800.
The number changes with the ongoing work.
As of July 10, 2026, Israeli media reported 2,561 dead participants in the attack.
A few days later, data appeared on more than 2,700 dead and about 300 detained.
And on August 9, 2026, the latest disclosure about NILI’s work mentioned 2,800 people from the list.
Therefore, the figure of 2,561, which was still relevant quite recently, is now a stage of this operation, not its current result.
The exact public number of people who remain alive in the database and are wanted cannot be named now.
Something else is known.
The list is not closed.
And the work continues.
“Healing of the soul”
This system has another side that cannot be described only in the language of intelligence.
In some cases, after the elimination of a person involved in an abduction or murder, this is reported to the relatives of the deceased or former hostage.
The Wall Street Journal described an expression used in this context, which can be translated as “healing of the soul”.
It should not be turned into an official term for every NILI operation — there is no public confirmation of the existence of such a mandatory procedure.
But the logic itself is clear.
A person cannot be returned a murdered child, wife, husband, or parents.
Months of captivity cannot be erased.
But it can be reported: the person identified as involved in this specific crime has been found.
He will no longer be able to repeat this with another family.
Why the story of NILI is more important than the number 2,800.
For NANews — News of Israel, the main thing in this story is not the number of airstrikes delivered and not even the number 2,800 itself.
The main thing is the change in the principle of responsibility.
October 7 could have remained in history under general words: “Hamas terrorists invaded Israel.”
But the general wording erases the individual person.
Who exactly abducted Yarden Bibas?
Who was near Shiri and the children?
Who grabbed Noa Argamani?
Who was at the Nahal Oz base?
Who filmed the murder of Israelis and then posted this video?
Israel is trying to provide a personal answer to these questions.
Technology has made possible what would have been almost impossible a few decades ago: years later, return to a few seconds of video footage, identify a face, link it to phone data, testimonies of other people, and intelligence information, and then find this person elsewhere.
This is the real story of NILI.
Not a mythical squad of avengers.
Not a person with a gun who goes through a list of names.
But a huge system of memory, identification, and search, where a phone frame, voice, number, face, or testimony of a released hostage can, in two years, connect into one name.
As of August 9, 2026, there are about 2,800 such names, after which a death mark can already be placed in the database.
But the database is not yet closed.
And judging by how Israel built this work after October 7, the change of the calendar year does not end it.
The events of that morning continue to be analyzed literally by people.
By faces.
By names.
And by what each of them did on October 7.