A commission of inquiry led by the renowned historian Andrew Roberts has now produced the most comprehensive report on the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks. Every kibbutz, town, city, and music festival victimized by thousands of Gazan infiltrators has its own entry in the report. That level of detail, along with the authors’ inclusion of the relevant recent history and background of the conflict, makes it to date the best guide to what we know about the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history.
The report, by the Oct. 7 Parliamentary Commission in the U.K., can and should be read in full here. And while it is difficult to summarize a report of this size, it’s worth paying special attention to the way the commission deals with one category of both victim and perpetrator: the civilian.
As Israel renews its strikes on Hamas in Gaza, the usual suspects in the press and on social media are dutifully and knowingly relaying made-up numbers and demographics of Palestinian casualties. The reason they do this becomes clear when one reads the commission’s report: The intentional Palestinian targeting of Israeli civilians for the most heinous of crimes, in many cases by Palestinian civilians, has convinced Gazans and their advocates that the only way to obscure the moral asymmetry between the two sides is to overwhelm the public with large-sounding numbers in the hopes that people forget the details.
There is also an element of psychological projection: The Palestinian perpetrators of 10/7 are guilty of that which they accuse Israel of doing.
Take, for example, the Hamas advocates’ obsession with painting the Jews as baby-killers. While it makes for difficult reading, it’s important to understand the lengths to which the enemies of Israel are willing to go. The youngest victim of 10/7, the report notes, was a mere 14 hours old. The report’s account of the death of baby Naama Abu Rashed:
“At 05:30 on 7 October, her mother woke up with labour pains in her ninth month of pregnancy. Her husband Tarafi drove towards Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheba and drove through Magen Junction where 10 terrorists were waiting across 2 vehicles. They fired at them with a machine gun and the mother was shot in the stomach. The car was also hit, forcing them to stop at Patish Junction to change a tire when they were shot at again. Upon arrival at the hospital, doctors were forced to carry out an emergency delivery. They discovered that a bullet had hit Naama’s leg and while she was born alive, she succumbed to her wounds at around 22:00 that evening. Her mother survived.”
Nine-month-old Mila Cohen, of Kibbutz Be’eri, was shot and killed in her mother’s arms. Eighteen minors lost both parents on that day. Several other minors had lost one parent and seen the other taken hostage. In total, 870 people, including 250 children, lost at least one parent.
Civilians, including children and the elderly, were deliberately burned alive as part of a widespread tactic: The commission found that there were more wildfires detected in Israel on 10/7 than any other day except one in the previous decade. Here is what that looked like on the ground throughout the Gaza border communities: “In Nir Oz, 5 members of the Siman-Tov Family were killed after their house was set alight. This included Yonatan, 35, his wife Tamar, 36, their twins Shahar and Arbel, 5 and their youngest Omer, 2. As the safe room started filling with smoke, Yonatan texted his sister ‘they’re here. They’re burning us. We’re suffocating.’ He then opened the metal screen on the safe room window, but the gunmen immediately fired into the room, killing both parents. The children died from being burnt alive and asphyxiating. Yonatan’s mother, Carol Siman-Tov, 70, was also shot dead in another house on the Kibbutz, alongside her puppy Boxer.”
Not only were civilians targeted; they were chased on foot by Palestinian invaders until they were killed, such was the essential barbarity of the entire invasion. The report notes that Gazans were armed with grenades to blow up any place surviving civilians might be hiding. One example was Shani Gabay. She first fled at the firing of rockets from Gaza and took cover in a shelter—which was then attacked with guns and grenades by terrorists. Gabay survived that too, and fled in a car that was blown up by an RPG. Civilians were to be pursued until murdered regardless of time, effort, or cost.
The terrorists were proud of all this, filming their exploits and uploading the videos to social media. In Kibbutz Holit, for example, terrorists killed a mother next to her baby, then filmed themselves putting shoes on the baby and rocking him in his crib before taking him hostage. Then they booby-trapped the mother’s body.
Attempts to make it impossible to escape were part of the plan as well. By 8 a.m. on 10/7, Hamas had taken control of the main highway that runs through the border communities as well as its main intersections. The rocket barrage with which the terrorists began the attacks was meant to keep civilians in shelters and saferooms in their homes, making it harder for them to flee when armed militants showed up.
Perhaps the most chilling part of the report, however, is its explanation for why one key element of Hamas’s invasion never happened. Terrorists had brought with them shelf-stable food and thousands upon thousands of weapons, including trapping devices and anti-aircraft launchers, designed to help them hold positions inside Israel beyond the day of attack. Why didn’t this well-prepped and well-stocked occupation come to fruition? The report quotes the Royal United Services Institute explaining that “the chaotic massacre that unfolded diverted efforts to prepare for a deliberate defense.”
The “chaotic massacre” to which RUSI refers is, the report explains, multiple waves made up of “thousands of Gazan civilians, who followed Hamas troops through the border breaches and joined in the attacks on nearby communities.”
This is the civilian not as victim but as perpetrator—the role of, the report says, thousands of Gazan civilians. Many of those Gazans partaking in waves of looting and kidnapping “went back and forth across the border.” This doesn’t include those on the Gaza side who held hostages in their “civilian” homes.
Again, the commission’s report does not make for easy reading. But there probably isn’t another document that so meticulously and irrefutably clarifies the moral asymmetry between the Jewish state and those who seek to destroy it.
