It has taken a couple months for the extent of the atrocities committed by Hamas to be revealed. Dealing with 1200 victims takes time and many bodies were burned or disfigured, as the Wall Street Journal reports in the article below.
I fully understand why Israel must react to the Hamas attack by waging total war against Hamas and its followers--and by "followers" I mean most of the people of Gaza.
The people of Gaza put Hamas in charge and supported them along every step of the way to October 7. The Gazans took welfare payments from all over the world (especially Iran and Arab countries) and instead of using it to build a normal society, used the money to build tunnels, import weapons, launch rockets against Israeli civilians and brainwash their children and fellow citizens to follow a radical, Jew-hating, death-obsessed version of Islam.
They brought their misery on themselves and I have no sympathy for them. I hope Israel continues its war as long as necessary to teach the Gazans that they will never succeed in destroying Israel but that they will succeed in destroying their own society unless thery give up their own dysfunctional, backwards and self-destructive ideology.
Investigators build legal case documenting ‘systematic and unprecedented cruelty’ with echoes of Adolf Eichmann trial.
www.wsj.com
NIR OZ, Israel—Eitan Cunio heard the militants enter his house and watched as gasoline seeped under the door of the safe room where he sheltered with his wife and two children.
His 1-year-old daughter was crying as the family’s home in Kibbutz Nir Oz was set alight and smoke began entering the room. Cunio put wet sheets at the bottom of the door and told his family they would stay inside rather than be killed or kidnapped. If we die, we die together at home, he said.
Before passing out, Cunio sent a tearful voice note to a friend in his community: “Brother, it’s horrible. We are going to die.”
Months have passed since the October day Israelis call Black Sabbath, when Hamas-led militants rampaged into Israel from Gaza, an attack that officials say killed some 1,200 people and included acts of torture, mutilation and sexual violence. Israeli investigators are now using some 200,000 photographs and videos and 2,000 witness testimonies to reconstruct what happened, with an eye toward building a legal case against those responsible that would meet international standards and provide a definitive historical accounting of the Oct. 7 attack.
Reporters from The Wall Street Journal examined some of that evidence, supplemented with interviews of first responders, survivors, families of victims and forensic scientists, to document an attack that Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai described as “systematic and unprecedented in its cruelty.”
Forensic evidence shared with the Journal by Israeli officials shows some victims were burned alive after militants used accelerants to set fire to their homes. Photos viewed by the Journal taken by first responders on the scene show bodies were mutilated including the sex organs of both men and women. The bodies of women and girls showed various signs of sexual assault, and recently, at least three female survivors have come forward to say they experienced sexual violence on Oct. 7.
...Israel has identified about 800 dead civilians from Oct. 7, including 37 minors under the age of 17, six of whom were under 5. Some 25 people over the age of 80 were killed, including a 94-year-old woman, according to the prime minister’s office.
Hamas militants and others kidnapped roughly 250 people on Oct. 7, according to Israeli authorities.
Dead bodies were taken to an Israeli military base where they were processed and those that were unidentifiable
sent to the National Center of Forensic Medicine, which took fingerprints, conducted X-rays and CT scans and removed tissue samples for DNA extraction.
Scans revealed signs of torture and execution, according to Dr. Chen Kugel, head of the forensics center. In some cases, the center found soot in the trachea, indicating people were burned alive as they inhaled smoke before bodies charred, he said. Others were burned after they were already dead.
One scan of blackened remains viewed by the Journal revealed two spines and two rib cages belonging to a child and an adult who were bound together with metal wire and burned alive, Kugel said. He added that more than 20 bodies were found with hands bound with zip ties or electric cords, indicating execution.
Militants posted videos of some of the killings and kidnappings on victims’ social media pages, where friends and family watched. When militants forced their way into Noam Elyakim’s home, they shot him in the leg, then took his wife’s phone and livestreamed the family being taken hostage on Facebook. In another instance, Shay Shimoni saw a video posted by militants of her 75-year-old mother dead in a pool of blood. The Journal viewed both videos, which are no longer online.
New details about sexual violence also are emerging. Investigators initially found no rape survivors, but at least three women have since come forward to the Ministry of Welfare saying they experienced sexual violence, said Ayelet Razin Bet Or, a former government official helping with the investigation.
One witness saw militants gang rape a woman and then cut off her breast, according to police testimony viewed by the Journal. First responders said they saw signs of sexual violence, including women found naked or with their underwear pulled down or tops removed.
The Journal saw images taken by a first responder of a naked woman with a knife and three nails in the crotch area, women whose clothing was partially or entirely removed and women with blood from the crotch area. In another image provided by the first responder, a woman’s breast was almost entirely sliced off. Her shirt was ripped away and she had a knife wound in the neck. In two other photos a naked man was found gagged and shot and one photo showed a man’s eyeball had been removed.
Shari Mendes, 62, a reservist in the Israeli army who helped identify bodies after Oct. 7, said people were shot in the head so many times they were disfigured.
...Sexual assault
At the festival, Hamas militants began to sexually assault women, witnesses told the police. Fighters took women back to Gaza with them, and in one example, paraded the half-naked body of a female festival goer in the back of a pickup, according to a widely shared video on Telegram.
In a recording of a phone call that morning, militants driving in Israel cheered as one of them talked about raping a woman.
“I am going to f— her, I am going to f— her,” he told another person on the line, according to an unverified recording shared with the Journal by Israeli officials...
