The Hamas 'CEO' who hired rapists and murderers on October 7: Former gang leader Zaher Jabarin runs the terror group's financial operations from a Turkish office and presides over a half-billion-dollar empire

In its mission to root out Hamas, Israel has pledged to hunt down every member of the terror group involved in the October 7 attack – wherever they are.

Just this week, the deputy head of the Iran-backed group was killed in a suspected Israeli attack in the Lebanese capital Beirut, showing that Israel is not afraid to strike targets outside the Palestinian areas of Gaza and the West Bank.

And in comments on Wednesday, the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency suggested the country might be prepared to go further.

While a small number of the military leaders are still believed to be in the Gaza Strip itself, others are taking shelter in other Arab states such as Qatar and Turkey.

And while there are more high-ranking members in Hamas's organizational structure, one in particular is believed to have financially enabled the deadly October 7 attack from outside Gaza: Zaher Jabarin, the “CEO of Hamas.”

Jabarin, 55, oversees Hamas's financial empire, estimated to be worth half a billion dollars, which funds the group's military operations.

He manages the terror group's financial relationship with Iran – its main benefactor – and controls the process of moving cash from Tehran to the Gaza Strip, officials say.

The group does this through money transfers using the informal hawala system, and more recently cryptocurrencies, the This is reported by the Wall Street Journal.

In addition, he also looks after a portfolio of companies that generate annual income for Hamas, and manages a network of private donors and businessmen who invest in the Islamist group determined to destroy Israel.

As a result, he was personally sanctioned by the United States in 2019, but was still able to continue operating.

According to the publication, his influence is considered so great that US and Israeli security officials believe he enabled Hamas to pay for the weapons and wages for its fighters who carried out the shocking October 7 attack.

Heavily armed gunmen attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping another 240, dragging them into Gaza.

According to the Hamas-led Health Ministry, more than 22,400 people have been killed in Israel's retaliatory campaign, more than two-thirds of them women and children.

“Jabarin played a big role because he handles all of Hamas's finances outside Gaza,” Uzi Shaya, a former Israeli security official who has investigated illegal financing, told the Journal. “Jabarin is the CEO of Hamas.”

Jabarin was close to Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas official killed on Tuesday in a precision strike in Beirut attributed to Israel.

Together, Jabarin and Arouri helped Hamas' military wing in the West Bank – the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades – and both have ties to Iran.

Arouri even wrote the introduction to a book that Jabarin published after his release from prison in 2011, as part of a prisoner swap in which Israel exchanged a thousand Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier.

Yahya Sinwar, the current leader in Gaza, was also released under the same deal.

“Days have not weakened his resolve,” Arouri wrote of Jabarin, the Journal reported. “He continues, God willing, to complete this journey, which is the path of jihad.”

According to his book, seen by the Journal, Jabarin was born in 1968 and grew up in Salfit, a city in the northern West Bank.

As a boy, he discovered religion and attended the local mosque, where he read works by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot.

According to an interview he gave, in his late teens he led a gang called 'The Shooting Squads' and joined the 1987 uprising against Israel known as the first Intifada. He told the Felesteen newspaper that he had written anti-occupation graffiti in Salfit.

But he soon turned to more violent means and acquired weapons, some of which he bought by borrowing money from his mother.

The Journal reports that one of his first contributions to Hamas was recruiting a Palestinian named Yahya Ayyash, who learned how to make explosives.

Jabarin was arrested in 1996 for the murder of an Israeli soldier, convicted of murder and given a life sentence.

While behind bars, he learned Hebrew, graduated and began writing his book, which was published the year after his release in 2011.

Meanwhile, during his fifteen years of captivity, Hamas grew into the group it is today: a popular faction in the West Bank and Gaza and an internationally recognized terrorist organization that took control of the coastal strip in 2007.

This allowed the country to raise taxes in Gaza, increasing its ability to raise funds.

By the time Jabarin was released, Hamas had set up a network of companies that provided the group with the income it needed, as well as a method of laundering money so it was not associated with the group to avoid sanctions.

U.S. officials say the base of operations was initially in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

There, Hamas is said to have moved millions of dollars from Iran to its military operations in Gaza. However, under pressure from the US, Saudi Arabia forced Hamas financial officials to leave the country's capital.

But they soon found a new home in the form of Turkey.

Hamas's financial office is now located in a building in Istanbul, where the group has interests in companies including shares in a real estate company listed on the Turkish stock exchange, the Wall Street Journal said, citing US sanctions.

Jabarin has evaded Western sanctions for years by using financial systems in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Turkey to create companies and push money into the hands of Hamas, a source told the Journal.

The US directly imposed sanctions on him in 2019, saying he had become the architect behind “a financial network that enabled Hamas to raise, invest and launder large sums of money” from its headquarters in Turkey.

A few years later, the US said Jabarin – in collaboration with other Hamas officials – had developed a real estate portfolio that makes up most of the group's $500 million in assets around the world.

In fact, Hamas's financial machine is so strong that officials in the US and Israel fear that even if the group is defeated on the battlefield in Gaza, Hamas will still have a deep coffers from which it can draw to continue the attacks and restart them. to build.

And in poverty-stricken Gaza, the promise of a regular salary from Hamas means the group can easily recruit more soldiers to its cause.

In an interview, Jabarin told the daily that he sees it as an “honor to get money for Hamas,” but denied his own involvement in raising money for the group.

He admits that he is now part of Hamas as a political party, and not of the organization's military al-Qassam Brigades.

Politically, he told the publication, Hamas maintains relations with many countries, including Turkey, Iran and Russia, but the group distances itself from its military wing.

“Israel is trying to mix apples and oranges,” he said, according to the Journal. “Al-Qassam has its own ties, far away from the political party Hamas.”