On Monday, Israel was rocked by a series of videos showing soldiers from an IDF unit called Force 100 being arrested for the alleged abuse of captured Hamas terrorists. Prior to the incident, the unit had received little public exposure since the beginning of the war, despite the soldiers' claims that they had been serving in reserve duty for nine consecutive months. Force 100 was founded in the early 1990s, as the events of the first Intifada brought overwhelming numbers of security prisoners into the Israeli prison system. The large ratio of prisoners to guards, coupled with the heightened tensions at the time, made it necessary for the IDF prison system to maintain a quick response force that would be trained in the complexities of combat within a prison facility and the high-pressure tasks faced by the guards, including riot control, hostage rescue, protecting officials touring prisons, and recovering escapees. Force 100 soldiers go through combat infantry training as well as prison guard training, supplemented by certification on a wide variety of less lethal equipment used for the specialty situations for which their intervention is required. The entire force was, originally, kept at less than 100 members, a number still reflected in its name. It is generally considered the military parallel to the Israel Prison Service's Masada Unit. Related articles: Two IDF reservists sold grenades to criminals IDF soldier found dead on military base Military police raid haredi neighborhood in Ashdod Soldier dies on base in southern Israel The unit took part in prison security operations and prisoner exchanges until 2006, at which point it was discontinued. With the October 7th massacre, the IDF reactivated it to help control the large numbers of Hamas personnel taken prisoner by Israeli forces, both within Israeli territory and during the invasion of Gaza. The force was assigned originally to guard the facility at Sde Teiman airbase where the terrorists were kept, and since then has also been tasked with bringing them for Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) interrogation and transferring them to other prisons to prevent overcrowding. As Israel has recently been releasing many Gazan prisoners deemed not to pose a threat or have any valuable intelligence, the ones left for Force 100 to guard are some of the most dangerous terrorists Israel has captured so far. The terrorists in their custody include Hamas 's elite Nukhba force that actually carried out the October 7th massacre and active combatants captured from various cities in Gaza. Force 100 is under the command of the Military Police Corps - the same corps as the investigative unit that made the controversial arrests earlier on Monday.
