Hamas’s incursion into Israel on October 7 transformed the politics of the Middle East. Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has carried out a forensic analysis of the events of that day – examining seven hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of dead Hamas fighters, and drawing up a comprehensive list of those killed.
In October 7, the I-Unit reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel.
But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape.
In particular the I-Unit reveals that claims by the Israel Defence Force that it found 8 burned babies at a house in Kibbutz Be’eri were entirely untrue. There were no babies in the house and the 12 civilians inside were killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the house.
This was one of a number of incidents where the police and army appear to have killed Israeli citizens.
October 7 is a deep dive into the events that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, the significance of which will reverberate for decades.
Published on March 20, 2024
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This film contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing.
On October 7, 2023, 1,200 armed Hamas militants breached the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Israel. They overran army bases and killed more than 1,000 Israelis and foreign nationals. They took dozens of children. They burned them. They tied them up. They burned them. And they executed them.
A family of four. Around the breakfast table. The father had his eye gouged out, the mother had her breasts cut off, the daughter’s foot was amputated, and the boy had his fingers cut off before being executed.
These accounts were used to justify a war against Gaza that has killed at least 31,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children.
Finish them, finish them. Never forget what happened.
Al Jazeera’s investigative unit conducted an analysis of the events of October 7. The investigative unit reviewed seven hours of footage, much of it from cameras carried by deceased Hamas fighters. It examined the testimonies of hundreds of survivors and compiled a comprehensive list of the victims. It found that large-scale war crimes had been committed, but also discovered that many of the most horrifying accounts were false.
Official spokespeople made use of disinformation—and at times, deliberate misinformation.
“I’m sorry to be graphic, but I don’t see a baby here.”
If you can activate people’s sense of disgust, they will be more inclined to support brutal retaliation against the Palestinians.
The investigation reveals that some of the victims were killed by Israeli forces.
“This footage… I find it very troubling. We don’t know who these people are—whether they’re shooters, civilians, or hostages.”
And it finds that October 7 may have changed the region’s politics forever.
“I regret to say that I think it was a phenomenal success—from their point of view.
October 7 sent a very strong and very clear message:
No one can sideline the Palestinians.”
October 7
In Palestine, there are many thriving communities built by refugees who have already found a home there.
The Israeli settlements—known as kibbutzim—that surround the Gaza Strip were built around the time of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The immediate surroundings of Gaza consist mainly of small villages, the kibbutzim.
In the early years at least, the kibbutzim and other villages played a defensive role. The idea was that wherever you established a kibbutz like this one, it would determine Israel’s border, it would hold the frontier.
Today, the kibbutzim are prosperous farming communities. The region has developed very well; it supplies a significant portion of Israel’s agricultural production. Its population is diverse and, on the whole, happy—until October 7.
The kibbutzim are located just a few kilometers from Gaza, where 2.3 million people live crammed into a narrow strip of land 41 kilometers long. Most of them come from families that once owned land on the other side of the barrier. Seventy percent of Gaza’s population are refugees.
Every day, they go to the barrier and see their lands, their homes, their fields beyond that barrier—and that land belongs to the Palestinians. It belonged to the Palestinians. They have lived there for millennia.
Hamas is an Arabic acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” It controls Gaza after winning elections held throughout Palestine in 2006. Hamas advocates armed resistance to the Israeli occupation. Its policies and actions have led to it being designated a terrorist organization by many Western countries.
Gaza has been under blockade since 2007.
“You can only imagine life in Gaza if you’ve lived there,
if you’ve experienced life in Gaza—especially as a child.
All the major memories I have of that time—
The funerals of martyrs, the bombs, the F-16s, the tanks invading our homes,
the tanks invading our cities.
Those are my memories.”
When you’re in Gaza, you always feel imprisoned. It’s really a prison.
In 2018 and 2019, the people of Gaza organized mass protests to demand the right to return to the land they once owned on the other side of the barrier. Palestinians felt abandoned. They felt abandoned and needed to remind the world that they were still there. They still hoped to return to their homeland.
The Israelis responded with force. Their snipers targeted many young men, including journalists and medics. Hundreds of Palestinians were murdered or killed in this way.
“I was a journalist in Gaza, and I covered the March of Return—I saw the horrors.
I saw a child get shot in the head.
He still had his schoolbag on.”
Israel claims the killings were justified because the demonstrators posed a security threat to the south of the country.
“During the Great March of Return, we came peacefully, by the thousands—
But what was the international community’s response?
Nothing.
Eyes and ears are always shut.”
In this context, we discussed repeatedly, over many sessions, what we could do. Generally, there was consensus within the political bureau: we must act. We must act. If we don’t, Palestine will be completely forgotten and erased from the international map.
We said it over and over. The situation in Gaza is about to explode. And if it does, we will never allow it to explode within our cities. We will go to the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip—to those who oppress, besiege, and imprison our people.
For months, Hamas trained openly for the incursion, posting videos online. The Israelis even obtained a detailed copy of the invasion plan. As with all major strategic surprises, it was misinterpreted.
It’s never a lack of information that leads to an intelligence failure. It’s usually a breakdown in the intelligence cycle.
Within the main intelligence agency, a woman in charge of intelligence on Hamas raised concerns multiple times. She went as high as possible—to the head of military intelligence. He listened carefully and said:
“I don’t believe it.
They don’t have the capability…”
They misled themselves with their perception.
“Gaza is discouraged. Gaza and Hamas are thinking about how to solve their internal problems—how to get more money, more jobs, how to open the borders, how to manage the siege. Hamas has neither the time, nor the means, nor the capacity to do anything against Israel.”
“I’ve studied the history of intelligence failures extensively. I’ve published books on the subject.
I don’t know of another failure this severe—at least in modern intelligence history—since 1939.”
Hamas fighters received instructions to present themselves at the rallying points. Only then were they given the details of the attack. None of the fighters knew about the operation until just minutes beforehand. It was a very tightly controlled operation, and very few members of the military leadership—and maybe one or two from the political bureau—were aware of it.
At that moment, reports of unusual movements on the Gazan side of the barrier reach Israeli military intelligence and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. From the early morning hours, they already had fairly reliable information about what was happening—enough that the head of Shin Bet, and shortly afterward, the Chief of Staff, both arrived at their offices around 2 or 3 a.m.
Again, it was probably regarded as just another exercise. The forces were not put on alert—which is the most natural thing to do when you receive indications that something might happen, even if you don’t know what. The decision was made to come back in the morning and reassess.
Of course, between that moment and the 6:30 a.m. attack—it was far too late.
Hamas fighters storm the main Erez crossing point. This is one of at least ten breaches in the barrier. Thousands of rockets are launched at Israel. Paragliders fly over the barrier. Hamas uses boats to attack targets in the northern Gaza Strip.
What is striking is that many synchronized elements had to occur for it to succeed. Very low-tech tools were used against, arguably, the most sophisticated military machine in existence.
Simple drones—even unsophisticated ones—destroyed a large portion of the radar systems. Sensors placed atop various towers, communication nodes along the border—were destroyed. This effectively blinded the southern command from the outset.
Israel’s first line of defense is overwhelmed. Hamas then attacks military bases throughout the region—including a base at Paga, just a few hundred meters from the barrier.
Chris Cobb-Smith is a human rights investigator who served 20 years in the British army. He analyzed footage of the assault on Paga.
“This is clearly a major base of the Israeli Defense Forces, and the way they managed to breach the perimeter and surprise this number of Israeli soldiers is simply staggering.
I can’t see how this was allowed to happen.
You can see here the number of armored vehicles nearby that don’t appear to have been activated.
It’s incredible that such a situation was allowed to unfold.”
“In your brother’s blood—kill him!”
Hamas catches some of them in their beds! This is something Israeli forces have never experienced—nothing like it, not even in the darkest nightmares of Israeli citizens or army commanders.
“We want this video to be broadcast worldwide. God willing, this is a soldier’s helmet.
We went to every corner, and with our pure feet, we entered every hiding place.
And there were no men to fight us.”
Military briefing documents are found on the bodies of deceased Hamas fighters. They provide written advice on the types of rockets and anti-tank missiles to use against a Merkava tank. Another document concerns armored personnel carriers (APCs).
What types of improvised explosive devices can be used against armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored combat vehicles? It is therefore very sophisticated and very clever.
As information about the attack begins to circulate, Hamas leaders outside the Gaza Strip gather to pray. But the leaders were as surprised as anyone by the rapid collapse of the Israeli army. I think everyone who watched it was surprised. I myself was completely surprised. How could this happen?
Some members of Hamas who shared their experience of what happened on October 7 with people I spoke to suggested that they expected a much higher casualty rate and thought that 80 to 90% of those who left on October 7 would die as martyrs before returning with hostages to the city of Gaza. The opposite happened. Exactly. Diametrically opposed, since only 10 to 15% of those fighters were killed before entering the Israeli settlements. The resistance was so weak from Hamas’s point of view that they had absolute freedom of maneuver. Hamas found the towns and kibbutzim at its mercy.
About 5 km from the barrier, thousands of young people had gathered for a music festival. From what I understand, they didn’t know there was a music festival in the area. It was a surprise. They found hundreds of young people on the site at dawn, who had partied all night and were still at a music festival. Hundreds of unarmed partygoers were killed. Some took refuge in the small air-raid shelters that dot the main highway. They were trapped.
“This one is alive. That one. Pull him by the hair. Load them. Bring more. By God, we will ruin your state. Don’t kill them. We need them as hostages. Bring more from inside. Quickly. Load them.”
Armed fighters quickly penetrated civilian communities. But their unexpected success highlights the limits of Hamas as a military force. Once the armed men gained access to the kibbutz, they did not seem to know exactly what they were doing, where they were, or what they wanted to achieve. They wandered aimlessly. They shouted at each other, they argued. In these images, they are clearly under enemy fire and do nothing to remedy it. It is total chaos.
The first priority seems to be to remove ammunition and weapons from their own wounded. There is no attempt at first aid, and certainly nothing that could be called a chain of command. There are no leaders.
“Allahu Akbar (God is great) and glory to Islam and the Muslims.”
The mujahideen and the fighters seize them by the throat. There is a helicopter. Scatter!
Hundreds of unarmed kibbutz residents are killed. Hamas seizes a large number of hostages. As news spreads about breaches in the barrier, hundreds of Gazans pour through. Many people were able to leave the Gaza Strip, including people who were not even part of the operation: civilians, smugglers, criminals who thought they could quickly get rich. People will go through there and do what they want. There is a wave of looting.
“The powerful people brought back the horses. God be with you.”
Many people, ordinary people, came from Gaza into the kibbutzim and the surrounding area. Thousands of people entered the area. Therefore, much of what happened was not the work of fighters alone, whether good or bad. A large number of the people taken seem to have been captured by Gazan civilians rather than by Hamas fighters.
At Kibbutz Nir Oz, a group of Thai workers is caught up in the chaos.
“My friends rushed into the room where they were hiding, but I had to go to the bathroom first. When I came out of the bathroom, Gazan civilians had entered our camp. It seemed that the people of Gaza were delighted to be able to destroy property. I heard them firing into the air, singing and dancing. Here’s the food! I thought I wouldn’t survive. I was lying on the floor and covering my head with my hands.”
Witoon is dragged in front of the room where his Thai colleagues were murdered. He is placed on a motorcycle and joins a group of people heading for the Gaza Strip, carrying loot and hostages. The memory of that day still haunts me.
The Israelis mobilize attack helicopters. Hamas fighters try in vain to shoot them down. The Israelis later release footage of dozens of strikes. On Israeli television, pilots admit it was difficult to distinguish shooters from Israeli civilians.
“I was on the plane on one of the sorties, and they said there were abducted people. What to do then? How do you shoot someone who is returning toward the border? Good question, and it’s a super complex dilemma. The decision rests entirely with you. There is no one to talk to. Yes, there is no one to talk to.”
In the absence of direction, the pilots say they join local WhatsApp groups to identify targets. The idea that pilots get information via WhatsApp groups is really remarkable. It is a sign of initiative seeking every possible way to obtain information.
Dozens of people try to enter on the left. And at the same time, it’s a scandal. I mean, what kind of way to conduct a modern war is that? There are a lot of people here.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reports that at noon the army issued a version of what is called the Hannibal Directive. The Hannibal Directive is an informal protocol that says: we would prefer a soldier be killed rather than captured alive. The Hannibal Directive is the result of earlier humiliations where Israel handed over hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of an Israeli soldier. It was understood that in such a case the preferred result was a killed soldier rather than a soldier in captivity. On October 7, it appears the Hannibal Directive was reactivated and applied even to civilian hostages.
The air force operated during those hours under an instruction aimed at preventing movements from Gaza into Israel and returns from Israel to Gaza. Seventy vehicles were struck. In at least some cases, all occupants of the vehicle were killed. The Israeli army does not deny this report. Israeli rescuers broadcast images of civilians burned in a car. The car was hit from above.
For me, it is inexcusable that a helicopter or any weapon system engages a target if you do not know what that target is. The images we are watching here are what I find very worrying. We have a lot of people here heading toward Gaza through the breach at the back. What worries me is that these images do not allow us to know whether these are Hamas gunmen or civilians, whether they are who they are, or whether they are hostages. And I do not believe the helicopter pilot or the machine-gun operator is able to tell either.
Channel 12 then interviews a resident of a kibbutz who was abducted. She recounts having come under fire from a helicopter.
“And as we advanced, about half a kilometer from the fence. The helicopter fired. Shots, fire on us, and I’m sure that’s it, I’m going to die now, I’m screwed. Then I look up and I’m alive. Were the terrorists killed by the gunfire? All the terrorists were killed, none were left alive.”
These images show the consequences of what appears to be a similar helicopter attack. There were nine hostages in the vehicle described in the Israeli TV report. One was killed. The other eight — including three children — survived. The hostages are then filmed being taken to Gaza in a second vehicle.
Even if you only use the Apache’s machine gun, those big rounds have a certain effect on the area and are obviously fired at a certain speed, so if you fire on a group of people it is very likely you will kill everyone. You knowingly put your own civilians in danger. I find that very worrying. Using this type of weapon in an environment where you cannot distinguish between friend and foe, between civilian and combatant.
Analysis of the Investigation Unit’s list of deaths reveals that 27 hostages died somewhere between their homes and the Gaza barrier, in circumstances that have not been explained.
Who is inside? Israeli security forces arrive at the music festival site.
“Go on, extend the area again, they could also be under the stage. Are there wounded here? Are they killed? Is everyone killed? All the people on the stage are killed. A sign of life? Give us a sign of life! Is there no sign of life? No. She’s dead.”
Police and army units storm the kibbutzim. It appears they too applied a version of the Hannibal Directive and killed civilians. Be’eri is the largest kibbutz in the area. Israeli media reveal that 12 people were killed there when police and the army opened fire on a house where hostages were located. Channel 12 interviews two survivors.
“They suddenly brought an assault tank, and I asked one of the soldiers: but if you fire shells, won’t that hurt the hostages? He tells me: ‘No, we only do it on the sides, to bring the walls down.’ Wow, seeing a tank inside Be’eri driving on the road. Wow! There were gunshots. Wow. Suddenly, a horrible boom. and I can’t move my legs.”
This story was ignored by the Western media.
“If they were killed, they were killed by shrapnel. They were not killed because they were executed. They were killed by the bombardment. There was crazy shelling in the house. It was madness. A tank came and fired shells. Incredible. If all the hostages are dead, it is solely because of the bombardment.”
Many other buildings show damage similar to that of the Be’eri house. All the footage I have seen of the Hamas assault from the other side of the border, through the barrier, into the kibbutz, shows that they were only armed with light weapons. It’s just RPGs. Rocket-propelled grenades and personal small arms. This image is clearly taken from inside a house, two holes in the wall, probably from some sort of heavy weapon fired against the house—very probably an assault tank.
It is impossible that an RPG could cause that much damage. In this image, it is clear that the building has suffered catastrophic structural damage, which was not caused by structural collapse due to fire. It is believed this resulted from the use of a heavy weapon system during the fighting.
The catastrophic structural damage sustained by many of these buildings can only be due to the use of heavy weapons systems against the kibbutz itself.
The Investigation Unit calculates that 1,154 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed on October 7 and in the days that followed. Among them, 256 were soldiers, 53 belonged to the police and other security forces, and 63 were civilian security personnel. The remaining 782 were unarmed.
The Investigation Unit’s list of the dead reveals that at least 18 of these civilians were killed by Israeli ground troops. Other bodies, found under the rubble, died in unclear circumstances.
In the days following October 7, the Israeli army brought journalists on tours of the kibbutzim.
“This is something monsters do, not humans.”
Hamas fighters and others committed crimes on October 7. However, Israeli media have focused not on the crimes they committed, but on the ones they did not commit.
“I spoke to some soldiers, and what they said is what they witnessed while going through the various houses, the different communities.
Babies—beheaded. That’s what they say.
No one could have expected it to happen like this.
The horrors I’m hearing from the mouths of these soldiers.
As I said earlier, around 40 babies were carried out on stretchers.”
But the Investigation Unit’s list of the dead shows that no babies were killed at Kfar Aza, the kibbutz from which this report originated. The story was nevertheless repeated by international media and even by U.S. President Joe Biden:
“I’ve been doing this for a long time.
I never really thought I would see—
That I would have confirmation—
Of images of terrorists beheading children.”
The White House later clarified that the President had not seen any photos of beheaded children.
A senior Israeli army officer then addressed journalists in front of a burned house in Kibbutz Be’eri. This is the house where 12 hostages appear to have been killed during the Israeli police and army assault.
“Inside this house were 15 other burned people.
Among them, 8 babies. In that corner.
They were gathered there and they were killed and burned.
Did you see? I evacuated them.”
But the list of the dead shows there were no babies in the house. And Colonel Vach does not tell journalists that the victims were almost certainly killed by Israeli forces.
Two days later, the regional head of Zaka—a volunteer organization that collects bodies—gave Sky News a different account of what happened in the same house:
“We’re talking about children—
Two piles of ten children each, tied back to back, and burned alive.
This goes beyond, it’s a different level.
I mean, it’s truly indescribable.
It’s indescribable, and I won’t describe everything I saw.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated this account during a conversation with President Biden:
“They took dozens of children.
They tied them up. Burned them.
And executed them.”
The list of the dead shows that two twelve-year-old twins were killed when police and the army stormed their house in Be’eri. But there were no other children.
“This was an interview you gave to British channel Sky.
Two piles.
We found them in Be’eri.
Two piles of ten children each, tied back to back and burned alive.”
Yet again, if we look at the death toll, in Be’eri, only ten children died. And they were not children, but people aged 18.
“So we all together, when you look at them and they’re burned, you don’t really know the age.
So we’re talking about people aged 18, 20.
And you can’t—you can’t look on-site and identify age or anything like that.”
This is not the only questionable story that Yossi Landau tells about Kibbutz Be’eri.
“We go further.
Then we see a woman.
She was lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
A large pool of blood.
She was pregnant.
Her belly had been slit open.
The baby, still attached by the cord, was stabbed.
And she was shot in the back.”
But Kibbutz Be’eri denied this version. The story of the pregnant woman reported by Zaka is not relevant to Be’eri.
Yossi Landau insists he witnessed the scene at Be’eri.
“If you want to see the image, I have the photo.”
“Can you share the photographic evidence with us?”
“To show you? Yes, it’s on my phone. But I’d prefer not to show it on camera.”
“That’s fine. I’ll come take a look.”
“Here’s the knife they used.
Here was the woman.”
“But this is the image after the bodies were removed?”
“Yes.
This is the baby. That’s it.”
“I’m sorry to be graphic, but I don’t see a baby here.”
“You don’t see the baby because… but here’s the photo of the mother.
When we arrived, we didn’t think to photograph everything.
We weren’t prepared. It wasn’t in our…”
The photo shows an unidentifiable charred piece of flesh. The list of the dead contains no victim matching Yossi Landau’s description.
On October 7, two babies died:
- One was killed by a bullet through a door.
- The other died following an emergency C-section after the mother was shot.
Neither was burned or beheaded.
“You who felt it with your own hands, your own eyes, your own nose—
What would you say to the person who minimizes what happened here?”
“I wouldn’t say anything.
I would ask that he be put with the Hamas terrorist, and he should be killed.
Because he is part of it.”
Visiting celebrities continue to be shown baby cribs, and the world continues to hear about murdered babies.
“When you take babies, cut them up, tie them, and burn them alive—
You’re treating them worse than an animal.
1,300 people murdered, babies.
These bastards put the babies in the oven and lit it.
We found the body a few hours later.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the fate of two young children:
“A family of four.
A young boy and girl, aged 6 and 8, and their parents, around the breakfast table.
The father had an eye gouged out in front of the children.
The mother had her breasts cut off.
The daughter’s foot was amputated.
The boy had his fingers cut off before being executed.
Then their killers sat down and had a meal.
That’s what this society is about.”
This story also comes from Yossi Landau and Zaka. An analysis of the evidence suggests it is also false.
Of the 782 unarmed victims killed on October 7, 36 were children, 13 of them under 12. None died under the circumstances described by Antony Blinken.
Marc Owen Jones, a media analyst, monitors the spread of these stories online. He believes they serve a purpose:
“How, as Israel, do you create a moral justification for what we’re doing—even though we’re killing far more people?
You have to emphasize brutality—because you can’t say we’ve killed fewer than Hamas.
So how do you do it?
By making these individual deaths seem even more disgusting and reprehensible.
If you can activate people’s sense of disgust, I think they’ll be more inclined to support, for example, brutal retaliation against Palestinians.”
In December, Benjamin Netanyahu met with Zaka volunteers and thanked them for speaking to the world press:
“We must buy time—
which we do by appealing to world leaders and public opinion.
You have an important role to play in shaping public opinion—
which also influences leaders.”
The stories of murdered babies and children are not the only ones being called into question.
The head of Israeli forensic medicine described to Sky News the state of the adult bodies he examined:
“Many bodies were shot, but before being shot, they were dismembered.
It’s a mode of execution.
You can see stab wounds in the back and head.
And if you do a scan, you see the pelvis is broken.
There are bullets inside.
So he was shot, stabbed, burned, and crushed.”
The Israelis claim to have found many bodies mutilated by Hamas fighters and others. But the evidence suggests that some of them, at least, may not have been Israeli.
“Crush him.
F*** his mother.
Crush him.”
In the days following October 7, a large number of videos showing abuse and mutilation of Palestinian corpses were posted online. The Israeli government would later admit that 200 of the bodies initially identified as Israeli were actually Palestinian.
“During Hamas’s horrific attack on our people on October 7,
we initially reported that the death toll stood at 1,400.
Today, we have revised that number down to 1,200,
because we realized we had overestimated the number of victims.
We made a mistake.
Some bodies were so badly burned that we thought they were ours.
In the end, they were apparently Hamas terrorists.”
There is a lot of evidence produced by the Israelis that is either contradictory or self-incriminating.
“If people say, ‘Oh, actually we examined the various bodies and realized some of the burned ones were actually Palestinians and not civilians,’
that raises the question:
Why were they burned?
Who burned them?
How were they mutilated?
And who mutilated them?
A proper forensic investigation should be able to determine who killed them and how they were killed.”
Israel also claims that Hamas is guilty of widespread and systematic rape.
The Israeli government released a video attacking the United Nations and other global institutions for what it called inaction and indifference to the fate of Israeli women:
“I’d like to report a crime.”
“Yes.”
“I was raped.”
“Really sorry. We’re here to help. What happened?”
“I was at a music festival.
We heard gunshots.
Everyone was running.
I started to run and he caught me,
he shouted something in Arabic, and he tore my…”
“Sorry to interrupt—did you say he shouted in Arabic?”
“Yes.”
Madeleine Rees heads an international women’s rights organization:
“Don’t take it personally.
The leadership has decided that any violence against Israeli women falls under legitimate resistance.
We’re sorry.”
It’s a very low blow.
Immediately after the horrific attacks of October 7, the United Nations responded by asking the already existing Commission of Inquiry to examine the atrocities committed in the region, stating that it wished to come investigate, that it was ready to do so, and capable of doing so.
But this was blocked.
It was blocked.
And it was blocked by Israel.
Hamas denies that any rapes occurred on October 7.
“In no case has there been any evidence that rape occurred. In any case.
I’m certain, based on our culture, based on our beliefs,
that this cannot happen.
Impossible that it would happen.”
But some claim to have witnessed rapes of women. One of them is a survivor of the music festival, who says he saw a group of Palestinian civilians surrounding a woman.
“They stood in a half-circle around her.
They were about 30-40 meters from us.
They grabbed her so she couldn’t move.
They took hold of her.
I was looking through the leaves, through the branches.
They started pulling her in all directions.
And they undressed her.
It was rape.”
The Israeli police presented an anonymous witness who described another rape, also at the music festival:
“Was the girl they raped alive?”
“Yes, she was alive.
She wasn’t wearing clothes.
And he cut off her breast.
He cut off her breast.
He threw it on the road.
They played with it.”
In another interview, this witness claimed to have seen a total of five women raped, and armed men walking around with the severed heads of three women.
But no forensic evidence of sexual violence has been produced.
A website created by the Israeli government to document the alleged atrocities of October 7 contains only one video suggesting rape. It shows the body of a young woman lying on the side of a road 14 kilometers north of the music festival site. She is not wearing underwear.
In December, this story became the center of an investigation by the New York Times. But the report was undermined when the sister of the woman posted on Instagram that the report was false:
“Yes, they raped. But in my sister’s case—no!”
The family denied that she had been raped. They said it would have been very difficult for her to be raped because she was in contact with them during the Hamas attack, and that her last message to them was probably four minutes before she was killed—and that’s true.
They thus question how she could have been shot, burned, and raped, all within four minutes.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
One of the three authors of the report, Anat Schwartz, is a former Israeli intelligence official with little journalistic experience. She has previously “liked” genocidal posts on social media, calling to turn Gaza into a “slaughterhouse.”
“I believe there was rape.
In every conflict, whenever armed men intend to commit violence,
it is highly unlikely there would be no sexual violence.
But nothing I’ve seen so far suggests it was widespread and systematic.
That’s a very high bar to meet.”
“To demonstrate that it was a widespread and systematic practice,
we will need far more evidence than what has been revealed so far,
and far more corroborating proof than what has been circulated.”
Five months after October 7, a report by the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict concluded that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence occurred in the context of the conflict.
The author stressed, however, that her report was “not an investigation.”
She urged the Israelis to allow “a full investigative process” and to “immediately grant access” to the International Commission of Inquiry, which has a mandate to investigate human rights violations in Israel and the occupied territories.
Israel still refuses to do so.
The UN report relied heavily on Israeli officials and rescue personnel. It stated that the visual evidence provides “no tangible indication of rape”—a conclusion supported by the Investigation Unit’s own analysis of videos and photographs.
In January, the Israeli police declared that it was struggling to match testimonies with known victims.
The policewoman leading the investigation told Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
“At this point, I don’t have a specific body.”
“In the absence of a credible and independent investigation,
I don’t believe we can claim it was a widespread and systematic practice.”
“We are essentially dealing with a state that has instrumentalized the horrific attacks on women
to justify—in our view—an assault on Gaza,
the majority of whose victims are women.”
In response to the events of October 7, Israel launched a bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip.
“On October 7, the first thing I remember is being terrified.
I was terrified because I know the Israeli response.
Every time an Israeli is killed, they kill 100 or 200 Palestinians.
So when I heard that more than 1,000 Israelis had been killed,
I knew that Israel would respond in a barbaric way.”
1,154 people were killed on October 7.
After five months of bombardment, approximately 31,000 people were killed in Gaza:
- 27% were adult men
- 29% were adult women
- 44% were children
There are several hundred babies among the dead.
“You’ve killed the young and the old.
Where are you? Where is the conscience of the world?”
Because of the destruction of Gaza’s health services, many deaths were not recorded, and the actual death toll is likely much higher.
Time and again, stories of rapes and baby murders by Hamas have been used to justify Israeli actions.
“I hear the calls for a ceasefire.
Tell me, what is the proportional response to the murder of babies?
To the rape of women and their incineration?
The beheading of a child?”
“The proportional response to the October 7 massacre is the total destruction,
the total destruction,
down to the last, of Hamas.”
“Killing, massacring,
women, children,
babies, rapes, beheadings—
we will wipe them off the map,
erase them from the face of the earth.”
“It wasn’t just rape.
It was torture.”
“I don’t think you can expect Israel to coexist with these savages
or to find a diplomatic solution.”
“The first thing I said to Netanyahu when this happened was:
‘Finish them, finish them.
Never forget what happened.’”
Sexual violence and other forms of violence are used to dehumanize an enemy.
And dehumanization is important in conflict. Why?
Because dehumanization lowers the threshold at which you’re willing to attack or hurt another group of people.
And how do you achieve that?
By seeing them as subhuman.
More than 70% of those killed were women and children.
Seventy percent.
And we know that more than 160 women per day are giving birth without adequate medical protection, undergoing C-sections without any form of anesthesia.
“I mean, it’s absolutely barbaric.”
“It was October 22 and my family was sleeping in their home.
There was my father, my older brother, his wife, and their three children.
My younger brother was also there, and so was my older sister Wallah and her four children.
There was my sister Ala’ and her children.
There was my sister Ayya and her three children.
They were sleeping at 5 a.m. when Israel bombed my house—
and they were killed.
Twenty-one people were killed.”
For Hamas leaders, the consequences of October 7 for the Palestinian people appear to be a price worth paying to end the Israeli occupation.
“October 7 sent a very strong and very clear message—
a well-defined message.
No one can bypass the Palestinians.
No one can enjoy stability or security
as long as Palestinians are denied their genuine rights to independence,
self-sovereignty, dignity, and freedom.”
“I regret to tell you that I think it was a phenomenal success from their point of view.
They brought the Palestinian question back to the regional and global agenda.”
But the war will end sooner or later. People are already stepping outside to see what Gaza looks like today—and it’s not a pretty picture.
“Part of these measures was necessary for operational reasons,
and another part was meant to make clear that such a situation can never happen again.
And beware, this is the price to pay.”
“The price paid by Palestinians is terrible. That’s true. It is heavy.
But name me a liberation struggle in which there was no costly price.
In Vietnam—how many millions died for Vietnam to become free?
So you see, there is no easy solution.
There is no small price to pay for freedom and independence.
And the Palestinians understand that.”
“They’re taking revenge—the only thing they’re doing is taking revenge.
And revenge against whom?
Against the Palestinian people—
civilians, women, children.
This will be a trauma from which the Palestinians will never recover.”
The New York Times stated that it stands by its report on the rape of an Israeli woman.
Anat Schwartz said she had “liked” the post calling to turn Gaza into a slaughterhouse “by mistake.”
The U.S. State Department said it had no comment on Antony Blinken’s testimony.
Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit contacted all the individuals who participated in this documentary, but received no response.
