Hamas practiced in plain sight, posting video of mock attack weeks before border breach
Less than a month before Hamas fighters blew through Israel’s high-tech “Iron Wall” and launched an attack that would leave more than 1,200 Israelis dead, they practiced in a very public dress rehearsal.
A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12 shows fighters using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets.
The Islamic militant group’s live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” also had militants in body armor and combat fatigues carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall’s concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would do for real in the deadly attack last Saturday.