Sahar Shehadeh

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, an estimated 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape, torture, kidnappings and desecration of bodies. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ social media for families to see.

As of November 10, 2023, over 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority being civilians, had reportedly been murdered during the attacks three weeks earlier. Details are below. Hamas kidnapped an estimated 230 Israelis, including 30 children. Over 3,000 were wounded, many severely. As of the same date, over 8,000 missiles had been fired from Gaza at Israeli communities, with Hamas claiming 5,000 the day it launched the attack.

Hamas began by launching thousands of rockets at Israel and using motorized paragliders “to infiltrate Israeli territory and secure terrain.” Terrorist ground forces destroyed parts of the border fence with Gaza, murdering and kidnapping soldiers.

The terrorists then turned their attention to 22 communities around Gaza, where they went house to house to savagely murder, mutilate and kidnap anyone they found. They executed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. They also beheaded children and babies, and massacred entire families, burning some alive who hid in their homes. Hamas terrorists kicked around the heads of beheaded victims like soccer balls. Israelis between the ages of three and 85 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Hamas has not allowed the Red Cross access to the hostages.

Over 360 unarmed young men and women were surrounded and slaughtered at one music festival alone. Bodies were publicly desecrated, with some dragged through the streets of Gaza, then beheaded. Women were raped next to the bodies of dead friends.

Forensic analysis of dead bodies showed evidence of torture and rape. Hamas terrorists said they were given explicit orders to carry out the atrocities, including chopping off victims’ legs and raping corpses. Hamas intentionally targeted youth centers and elementary schools to execute and kidnap children. They also took stimulant drugs to give added energy to murder and maim. Nazis also took drugs during World War II to fuel their anti-Semitic massacres.  

The atrocities were acknowledged as the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, including by U.S. President Biden, who also compared Hamas to ISIS. Hamas attacked on the annual holiday of Simchat Torah, which that year was on Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath.

The Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians are crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The mass murder generated great sympathy for Israel from many countries but led to countless celebrations among Palestinians and anti-Israel organizations in America that back the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In addition, Hamas called the the October 7, 2023 terror attacks “Al-Aqsa Flood,” a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the mosque has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before Israel was founded in 1948. Such propaganda has led to multiple periods of violence against Israeli civilians.