As drones play a role in the surprise attack on Israel this weekend, questions about how the terrorist organization secured the latest weaponized drone technology are being asked. According to Israeli experts speaking to the media in September about the Hamas drones, “the inspiration for them is Iran.”
The surprise attack by Hamas has included massive barrages of rockets along with attackers entering Israeli territory by air, land, and sea, causing mass casualties. At the same time, numerous reports of Hamas attacking Israeli troops, equipment, and even civilian targets with drone strikes are emerging.
Social media contains numerous videos purporting to show Hamas drones attacking Israeli targets with explosives. Although all such videos should be treated with skepticism in the age of deep fakes and digital manipulation, defense analysts are taking the videos seriously.
Videos of alleged drone strikes from this weekend include:
#BREAKING Hamas armed drone strike on Israeli Merkava 4 tank. pic.twitter.com/e8gph7tYVK
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 7, 2023
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This video shows a Hamas drone dropping a bomb on an Israeli ambulance.
This is a war crime. The world must intervene. #IsraelUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/yAhGNT3ATi
— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) October 7, 2023
Hamas fighters dropped a projectile from a drone onto an automatic machine gun of the Israeli military. pic.twitter.com/Up7cI45qXp
— Sprinter (@Sprinter99800) October 7, 2023
The Jewish Press, the largest independent weekly newspaper in the United States, reported on the terrorist organizations’ unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) capabilities in September. The conclusion of experts is that Hamas engineers are backed by Iranian assistance. As Breitbart News’ John Nolte notes, Iran has received billions of dollars from Joe Biden’s administration.
Via the Jewish Press:
Tal Inbar, a senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes public support for missile defense systems, noted that this was not the first time Hamas has fielded UAVs.
“Hamas has a number of models that have a very similar appearance to UAVs in the possession of Hezbollah, and in principle one can say that the inspiration for them is Iran,” he told the Tazpit Press Service.
While it remains uncertain which elements of Hamas’s drone program are smuggled in from Iran and which are assembled in Gaza, it is beyond doubt that Iranian know-how is fueling Hamas’s UAV fleet build-up, he said.
Uzi Rubin, founder and first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, also believes the drones are enabled by knowledge transfers from Iran. He told the Jewish Press, “Hamas has no problem producing and assembling all of the rest on its own.”
As the sudden conflict continues, Israel will have to shift its tactics to meet the threat not only of human attackers, but also drones carrying a variety of weapons aimed not only at military targets, but potentially at civilians as well.
Read more at Jewish Press here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.