The intelligence that young female border lookouts with limited training can gain by virtue of their field position is “equal” to all of the billion-dollar ultra-cutting-edge technological intelligence that highly trained Unit 8200 officers can obtain, IDF Southern Command field intelligence officer for Brigade 636 Maj. “Y.” told The Jerusalem Post in an interview.
Y. made the statement when the Post asked him about the recent loss of field intelligence that Israel has suffered due to the need to withdraw from nearly all of Gaza as part of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire.
Pressed that if the war is really over, it seems Israel would lose all of its Gaza field intelligence that it benefited from during the invasion when it had large volumes of forces inside Gazan cities, Y. disagreed.
“Even after the war… there were and will be other sources that [gather] intelligence like the female lookouts. Maybe we won’t have the security perimeter, but at the same time we will have lookouts, and they are no less important than Unit 8200. They are equal. The soldier on the front can see things with their physical eyes that no one else can,” said Maj. Y.
Further, he stated, “They are another kind of intelligence. We need to mix intelligence from units 504 [human spying] and 8200, the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency], and lookouts, and put them all together. An intelligence officer needs to mix all of these into building a situation report. It should not only be based on Unit 8200. We need all the different pieces of the puzzle.”
After the Oct. 7 failure of all the fancy Unit 8200 systems and analysts and where top commanders ignored young female lookouts who correctly warned them that Hamas appeared to be getting more dangerous on the border, Y. said there could be no more excuses. Even junior field intelligence collectors needed to be taken seriously.
He hoped that real changes are and will happen in IDF intelligence to restore the importance of field intelligence so that top officials can avoid future Oct. 7 scenarios.
Y. is a 43-year-old reservist officer with three children, who normally helps run a start-up.
He started his service in Sayeret Yael, which is connected to a variety of intelligence and engineering issues, connected to the larger Yahalom tunnel warfare unit. He spent time serving in Gush Katif prior to the 2005 withdrawal.
Later, he served in a variety of field intelligence and collection capacities at the battalion level, going into action in Gaza with ground forces during the 2008-2009 conflict.
By 2016, he was promoted to intelligence officer for Brigade 636, which he calls his second family.
Besides Gaza, Y. spent significant portions of the war up against Hezbollah in the North and a short period in the West Bank.
Khan Yunis – Y. and Sapir at the front
Y. spent a significant amount of time serving in Khan Yunis during the Israel-Hamas War, especially in late 2023 to early 2024.
“I arrived in Khan Yunis after participating in the invasion in the Netzarim Corridor. As a field intelligence officer, my dilemma was: Is my place at headquarters in Israel with everyone on my team where I can more directly manage the full intelligence picture? Or should I be closer to the front lines?” he said.
He explained, “If I am directly accompanying the brigade commander, I will have a limited understanding of the broader intelligence picture because you are always receiving tons of data. But at headquarters, you have less influence over how operations forces in the field are actually understanding and using what you send them. Until this war, I was usually back at headquarters.
“But in Khan Yunis, I wanted to be with the brigade commander to have more influence with him. So I issued orders to have the intelligence network systems set up where I was near the front. I managed all my staff from a distance,” he said.
Praising the intelligence Sapir Unit, which handled all of his technological infrastructure in the field, he noted, “Without a digital cloud set-up, radio hookups, and cellphone networks, we could not have done the daily video conferences we did or seen all of the intelligence information.”
For example, “We see a terrorist in a specific house, and we need to provide the house coordinates to the brigade commander. That takes a lot of time.” But with Sapir providing a digital network in the field, the process can happen rapidly.
Also, he said, “At night when I return from field operations to the forward brigade headquarters in enemy territory, I want to see the full intelligence picture, including all the separate technological applications with the original raw intelligence and the intelligence analysis process, which lead to various conclusions.
“That way, I can have enough information to say, ‘I don’t agree with this process or analysis, and we should look at an issue differently,’ Or I can confirm that the conclusion was arrived at correctly,” Y. stated.
Y related, “I was able to receive everything we had on any specific target for intelligence: pictures, videos, satellite photos, sensors, signals intelligence information from various spies, whether from IDF Unit 504 or the Shin Bet,” thanks to the technological efforts of Sapir.
He said that when he was maneuvering in the field with the brigade commander, he told his staff to send him only intelligence that would be used by them locally and immediately. Anything that was not immediate would be sent to him later “when I had more quiet, and the attention to absorb it. Then I would present it all to the brigade commander so he had a clear vision for missions for the next morning.
“This allowed me to influence his [the brigade commander’s] priorities as to where he would maneuver next. I could suggest going directly to one location and maybe skipping another location and returning to it later,” Y. said.
Next, he noted, in a rapid period of time, “I could show him updates about where we think we found a new tunnel or new parts of a tunnel, and where we may have found an ambush or an improvised explosive device.
“The intelligence I give the brigade commander could also influence him to decide to move to a new area that we had not cleared [from Hamas] as much yet,” he remarked.
How much better was Sapir’s technological assistance in Khan Yunis than what standard IDF units received in the field?
Y. noted, “Other systems’ maps were not as updated as mine, and my videoconferencing worked at all times, whereas other IDF systems were much less reliable.”
He said that Sapir had to multiply the number of computers greatly to keep up with the data streaming in from the war.
“Having their personnel come into enemy territory in Khan Yunis to set up my forward systems was not trivial,” said Y.
In addition, he stated, “My equipment, electronics, and digital performance was at a much higher level than the rest of the military because it was handled by Sapir, which specifically deals with IDF intelligence infrastructure.
“We can get satellite photos in a super short time into the field and can receive video footage of a Hamas location blown up by a drone in a different area of Gaza from less than an hour ago. In many instances, you can see live footage of operations,” he explained.
Y. helps decipher, combat tunnel warfare
In September, the Post reported that then-Division 98 commander Dan Goldfus had arrived at a radical conclusion over months of fighting in Khan Yunis, which altered the course of the war.
Contrary to conventional wisdom up to that time, Hamas was not using the tunnels to hold their ground and fight penetrating IDF forces. Rather, they were only using the tunnels to set booby traps and to maneuver unseen by IDF aerial assets.
But this revelation came gradually, after many experiences.
Y. was a key intelligence officer in the field in Khan Yunis while the huge challenge of the tunnel issue was being analyzed.
He told the Post, “I needed to look at the multiple dimensions of this new warfare – that the enemy was not just above ground but also underground. And underground was not two dimensions but also had different levels and depths for different tunnels.
“I need to explain this to the brigade commander and also to show him how I built the situation assessment regarding tunnels. How attached are they, how deep, how connected to the battle space above ground. This is a very different concept than how we ever fought before, and we have to do this in real time mid-war,” he said.
Further, he continued, “We started this process in November to December [2023] in Netzarim, and then had a process of learning and improving our understanding.”
In some instances, he said he and the brigade commander in Netzarim, in central Gaza, may have spent the day in tunnels and plowing through significant amounts of underground water, with military altercations along the way.
Finding hostages
As an important intelligence officer in Khan Yunis, where many hostages were being held, Y. performed critical functions in collecting, analyzing, and processing for headquarters new findings related to the hostages held by Hamas.
“We carefully collected every piece of information there was or that looked like it might be related to the hostages. What is the process for intake of these materials when you are still in the field?
“I would check with combat fighters at the front to make sure they understood that all hostage-related intelligence was critical and needed to be rushed to me, the senior intelligence officer on the front, at a minimum.”
Sometimes he would immediately send the information to the most senior officials in IDF intelligence. “Our forces often thought they saw signs of hostages, so they brought me a lot of information,” said Y.
“Every piece of information was part of the picture we needed to present to top commanders. Maybe we might find a house where there were various signs related to hostages. For me, as a father, it deeply troubled my heart to see some of these findings.
“But we hoped we could find something that could return the hostages, and we carried out many operations,” he added.
All hostage-related information deemed credible was sent to Maj.-Gen. Nitzan Alon’s special hostage recovery command, as well as the general IDF intelligence command.
The field intelligence officer said, “Sometimes we found equipment from one of the Israeli Gaza border villages or an identity card or something larger like a bike.”
Moreover, he said, “Intelligence from units 504 [human spying], 9900 [satellites and air force], and Shin Bet intelligence is the sexy part of intelligence, but a lot of critical intelligence comes from regular soldiers on the ground – what are their feelings in the field – not just intelligence from Unit 8200.”
Avoiding harming Palestinian civilians
Y. did not only have to be careful to look for hostages as he helped direct operations, but he also needed to be on top of intelligence to avoid killing Palestinian civilians. “Hamas used children to collect intelligence. There was a four- or five-year-old girl whom terrorists sent. We gave her food and dignity,” he recounted.
Further, he stated, “Intelligence officers always bring forward information on where innocent Palestinian civilians are located, to influence war decisions to avoid hitting them.
“Most of the time, there weren’t innocent civilians where the IDF invaded, there were just terrorists. But sometimes you would have a school where terrorists would use the local Palestinian civilian population as human shields, or other similar areas of refuge,” Y. said.
Did he and the IDF deal with this sufficiently, in light of all the claims of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed?
“I feel complete with myself about using the methods we used to avoid harming them,” he said.
