On the evening of October 9, 2023, a special force of reserve soldiers arrived at Kibbutz Be'eri. The kibbutz, whose residents had been massacred, had already been declared clear of terrorists, but smoke still rose from the ruins of burned houses and combat-clad fighters moved between the paths.
The unit commander approached members of the kibbutz's rapid-response security squad – the only Be'eri residents still present in the community, exhausted after three days without sleep. He asked them to take him quickly to the operations command room, where recordings from the security cameras scattered across the kibbutz were stored. "I need this material to bring the hostages home," he told them.
According to one of the security squad members, "In those days, the hostages were the most important thing. I walked him to the command room and let him take the recording device that stored all the camera footage. The officer promised that the material would not be shared with anyone and would be returned in full as soon as possible. I believed him. And honestly, in those days, my mind was on completely different things."
The officer did leave the squad's members his phone number, but he gave them no document or written commitment regarding the fate of the sensitive recordings he had collected. By the next day, he had already left Be'eri with the material in hand, heading toward the Kirya (the IDF's military headquarters complex in Tel Aviv).
Two days later, one of the members was watching television and saw the well-known footage of the elderly Gazan man hobbling into one of the Gaza border communities on crutches. "At that moment I was seething with rage," he said. "Because I recognized that the material came from the perimeter fence camera at Be'eri – the same camera whose footage had been handed to the officer."
The unit that operates "in the gray zones"
We can now reveal that the officer belonged to a classified unit operating under the Ground Forces Command. The unit – composed of reserve soldiers who are veterans of elite special forces, primarily Sayeret Matkal (the IDF's elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit), Shaldag (an IAF special operations unit), Shayetet 13 (the IDF's naval commando unit), and Duvdevan (a special forces unit specializing in undercover urban warfare) – was founded roughly a decade ago by Yoaz Hendel, who was then still an officer in Shayetet 13. Little can be said about the unit's activities beyond the fact that it typically operates in combat zones. According to its operational doctrine, unit members attach themselves to maneuvering forces in the field and collect materials that may assist the IDF across various areas. According to someone who knows the unit well, "This unit operates in the gray zones."
In the early hours of October 7, the unit commander – identified only as N., a reserve soldier and Sayeret Matkal veteran – decided on his own initiative to activate the unit and exploit its comparative advantage. Unit teams were dispatched to the Gaza border region, which was still under active fighting, and amid ongoing combat, they carried out an intensive collection of visual materials from GoPro cameras belonging to killed Nukhba (Hamas' elite assault force that led the October 7 attacks) terrorists, dashcams, security cameras, and other sources. According to sources familiar with the details, unit members received an explicit order not to touch personal phones.
It is important to emphasize that the unit's activities during those days were legitimate and indeed critical. According to a source familiar with the details, the materials collected helped produce the "atrocities film" that served Israel at the international level, and also helped identify hostages who until then had been classified as missing. "In that respect, this is a tactical unit that managed to deliver strategic achievements for Israel," that source said. "There are families who know what happened to their loved ones only because of the materials this unit collected."
"Promises broken by the IDF"
Yet some of the materials taken by the unit, according to testimony that has reached us, were never returned to their owners. The materials, it has emerged, were passed along to bodies such as The Hostages, Missing Persons, Returned Citizens, and Their Families Management (the official Israeli government body coordinating the response to the October 7 kidnappings), headed by Nitzan Alon, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, and other entities within the defense establishment. From there, the unit members no longer had control over them. As a result, some of the materials were published without the people of Be'eri – and other communities and individuals affected on October 7 – being notified in advance or giving their approval.
Among those in the unit, there is a feeling that the sincere promises they made to residents of the Gaza border communities regarding the use of the materials were broken by other bodies within the IDF. "The failures occurred at levels above the unit," said a source who is well familiar with the matter. "The unit commander himself has no authority to go to the IDF and say, 'Return all the materials now.'"
זה תיעוד שלא דומה לשום דבר שראינו: הרגעים שבהם חברי כפר עזה נכנסים אל תוך האלונית שצמודה לקיבוץ. חיילים נושאים ילדים על הידיים והתושבים רואים עכשיו בפעם הראשונה אחד את השני – אחרי שחולצו מהאש, ומצלמות האלונית מתעדות הכל: את הכאב, והחברות, והחסד. הנה הקטע:@GaliGnt pic.twitter.com/r6OSvfz07L
— עובדה (@Uvda_tweet) April 16, 2026
Indeed, the materials that were taken were returned to the kibbutz only after a significant amount of time had passed. Beyond that, two sources at the kibbutz who were exposed to the content this week, forcefully, allege that the materials had been "tampered with" and were returned with deletions.
It should be noted that Israel Hayom was unable to independently verify this claim, though it should be pointed out that the feelings of Be'eri's residents received reinforcement following the publication of a report by Gali Ginat on Uvda, which exposed filmed footage from the Dor Alon gas station near the neighboring Kfar Aza – footage that the IDF had previously insisted had been deleted.
"October 7 is defined by a profound crisis of trust," said a source at Be'eri. "It was very hard for us to trust the members of the classified unit who came to us on October 9 and asked for the camera materials. Despite the failure – despite the fact that the army didn't come – I convinced myself that many people care, and I managed to trust them. I gave them what they asked for.
"And then a second breach of trust arrives," the source added. "The decisions to delete materials were made 'under fluorescent lights' – it's a conscious decision, not one made in the chaos of combat. These are recordings that belong to the community, of people from the community, and you simply take them and delete them without giving them back. It's even insulting."
Q: Why do you think portions of the footage were deleted?
"The day will come when an investigative commission is established here. The fewer witnesses there are, the less damage certain people in the military will sustain. I know it sounds conspiratorial, but the more I think about it, the more that is the conclusion I reach."
The IDF Spokesperson's response will be published upon receipt.
