Hamas used a sequence of emojis sent to its operatives’ phones as a coded signal to prepare to launch the October 7, 2023, terror onslaught, it was revealed on Monday.

The revelation was first reported by Channel 12 news and approved for publication by the Military Censor, more than two years after the attack.

It is believed that the sequence of emojis was used to instruct members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force to equip their phones with Israeli SIM cards to be used in Israeli territory, to gather at various staging grounds — including in homes, mosques, and tunnels — and to prepare their weapons for the attack.

At 9 p.m. on October 6, 2023, the Shin Bet security agency identified a handful of Israeli SIM cards in the hands of Hamas Nukhba terrorists being activated.

The SIM cards were being monitored by the Shin Bet, and the agency updated IDF intelligence officials on the development. Later that night, more SIM cards were activated, totaling several dozen.

On phones seized from Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7, the IDF identified that the same string of emojis was sent on two previous instances in which Hamas intended to launch its large-scale attack, in May 2023 and September 2022.

Read more: IDF identified but ignored 5 warning signs of Hamas attack on eve of Oct. 7, its probe shows

In May 2023, the Shin Bet also identified dozens of Israeli SIM cards in the hands of Hamas terrorists being activated, though ultimately the terror group did not launch the attack then.

The use of the emojis by Hamas to notify its terrorists to prepare to launch the onslaught was only discovered retrospectively as part of the IDF’s investigations into October 7 and was not identified in real time.

The IDF’s investigations into the failures of October 7 found that the military’s conduct, decision-making, and the intelligence it possessed on the night between October 6 and 7 were based on the results of years of false assessments about Hamas.

As a result, intelligence officials on all levels failed to provide a warning for what would come. Hamas’s October 7 attack claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, with another 251 people kidnapped and much of the area devastated. It launched the war in Gaza, which raged until an October 2025 ceasefire that has largely held, though violence has continued.

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