One Name At A Time: Israel Hunts The Killers Of October 7

Israel has a list.

It contains the names and identities of the terrorists believed to have participated in the October 7 massacre--the men who crossed into Israeli communities, murdered civilians, kidnapped families and helped drag hostages back into Gaza.

And Israel has made clear that the passage of time will not make those names disappear.

Israeli security services have now publicly acknowledged a special mission dedicated to identifying and pursuing those involved in the attack. The unit, known as NILI, has reportedly built an enormous target database using intelligence gathered from captured terrorists, released hostages, surveillance footage, facial recognition technology and even videos recorded by the attackers themselves.

Israeli officials say thousands of those on the list have already been killed, either during the October 7 fighting or in subsequent military operations, while hundreds more have been captured.

One Israeli soldier reportedly described the operation in chillingly simple terms: the names are kept in a computerized list, and as individuals are eliminated, another line disappears.

One name at a time.

But Israel has been here before.

In September 1972, Palestinian terrorists from Black September attacked Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were ultimately murdered.

Israel's response did not end when the television cameras left Munich.

Over the following years, Israeli intelligence pursued individuals believed to have been connected to the massacre and the terrorist networks behind it. The campaign became one of the most famous examples of targeted counterterrorism in modern history.

The message was unmistakable:

You may escape the scene of the crime, but that does not mean you have escaped accountability.

That same philosophy appears to be shaping Israel's response to October 7.

Ceasefires may come and go. Governments may change. Diplomatic pressure may increase. But Israel appears determined that participation in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust will not simply be absorbed into another Middle Eastern political settlement.

There will be consequences.

Critics will inevitably describe such a campaign as revenge.

But there is an important distinction.

Revenge seeks suffering because suffering has occurred.

Justice seeks accountability for those responsible.

October 7 was not an anonymous act of war carried out by faceless armies. Many of the perpetrators recorded themselves entering Israeli communities. Cameras captured kidnappings, shootings and assaults. Intelligence agencies have spent years identifying the individuals involved.

Israel is not merely saying, "Someone attacked us."

It is asking, "Who did it?"

That distinction matters.

Nations have an obligation not only to defend their citizens during an attack, but also to ensure that those who deliberately murder civilians do not simply disappear back into society and wait for the next opportunity.

For Israel, allowing October 7 terrorists to receive effective amnesty could send exactly the wrong message.

The real audience for Israel's campaign is not only the people whose names are already on the list.

It is the people considering joining the next massacre.

Deterrence depends upon creating consequences that an enemy believes are real.

If a terrorist thinks he can cross into Israel, murder civilians, return home, survive long enough for international pressure to produce a ceasefire and then live safely under a political agreement, the deterrent effect is weak.

Israel is attempting to establish a very different calculation:

Participate in the slaughter of Israeli civilians and your responsibility does not expire when the war ends.

Perhaps not next week.

Perhaps not next year.

But Israel will remember.

That was part of the message after Munich, and it is clearly part of the message now.

Israel should remember the failures of the Munich campaign as carefully as its successes.

In 1973, Israeli operatives in Norway mistakenly killed Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent Moroccan waiter they believed was a terrorist operative. The incident became an international scandal and demonstrated the enormous danger of intelligence errors in operations built around individual targeting.

Justice without precision can quickly become injustice.

That makes today's extensive use of video evidence, facial recognition, interrogation and multiple intelligence sources particularly important.

If Israel claims the right to pursue October 7 perpetrators years after the attack, it also carries the responsibility of getting the identities right.

But Munich offers an even bigger lesson.

Israel hunted many of the men connected to Munich.

Yet terrorism did not disappear.

Organizations changed. Leaders changed. Tactics changed.

The ideology survived.

And that may be the most important lesson for Israel today.

Finding every October 7 terrorist would provide accountability for yesterday.

It would not necessarily prevent tomorrow.

Israel could eventually cross every identifiable perpetrator off its list and still face another October 7 if Hamas--or another organization built on the same ideology--is allowed to retain weapons, financing, tunnels, command structures and the ability to recruit the next generation.

That is why the debate over Hamas disarmament is ultimately larger than the hunt for individual terrorists.

Accountability deals with the last massacre.

Deterrence warns those contemplating the next one.

But destroying the infrastructure of terrorism is what makes the next massacre harder to carry out.

Munich taught Israel that terrorism carries a long memory.

October 7 may teach an even harder lesson:

It is not enough to hunt the men who committed an atrocity.

You must also dismantle the machinery capable of producing another one.