“Mom, be quiet, don’t move,” Erez, 12, texted. Hamas militants had stormed his father’s house, in their southern Israeli kibbutz of Nir Oz, where he and his 16-year-old sister, Sahar, had spent the night.
The militants’ decision to film their reign of terror has deepened the anguish of Israelis, but it has also given experts in Israel’s vaunted cybersecurity and intelligence sectors a great deal of evidence to work with. They are leading a grassroots effort now to comb through the footage and the photographs for clues about where hostages are being held.
“We’re running our operation here like a lean, efficient start-up,” Har-Tuv said. “We don’t have time.” But it is a time-consuming and inexact process. One of the biggest challenges, Franco said, is that hostages have been moved repeatedly. “We’re figuring all of this out as we go,” said one volunteer, among a group hunched over their laptops as they toggled through spreadsheets filled with translated posts, hashtags and geolocations.