OPINION:
The atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, were recorded by the terrorists themselves on their hip GoPro cameras, their mobile phones and even the phones of their victims.
Nevertheless, within hours, there were those in America and Europe denying that invaders from the Gaza Strip, after breaching the Israeli border at 119 locations, had carried out mass murders, sadistic sexual violence, mutilations, hostage-takings and the burning of babies.
That shouldn’t surprise you. After all, there’s my truth, your truth and his, her and their truths, right?
No. Not right.
Lord Andrew Roberts of Belbravia, one of the world’s most distinguished historians, understood this, and it troubled him. He has seen how easy it is to propagate historical lies around the world and across generations.
Serious historiography, by contrast, requires forensic evidence, survivor testimony and other reliable data.
He did the hard work necessary to produce the “7 October Parliamentary Commission Report.”
Extensively researched by Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on UK-Israel and published last month, this 300-plus-page document details almost everything that happened over “the two days between the unleashing of the assault on the morning of 7 October, 2023, and the liberation of the last of the Kibbutzim.”
In that brief period, Hamas terrorists killed 1,182 people in one of the largest terrorist attacks in history.
Almost 3 out of 4 victims were civilians, the youngest a 14-hour-old infant, the oldest a 92-year-old survivor of the Holocaust. The invaders abducted some 251 hostages. Today, 59 are still held captive, with 24 believed to remain alive in unspeakable conditions.
“Over 90% of those killed or taken hostage were Israeli citizens, including Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, and Bedouins,” the report reveals. “Citizens from 44 nations around the world were killed and taken hostage.”
“Hamas orchestrated and led the attack,” the report adds, “with 3,800 of its elite Nukhba forces and members of Izz al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades invading Southern Israel. They were supported by 2,200 individuals from other armed groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and civilians from Gaza. A further 1,000 individuals stayed in Gaza to operate rocket launchers and provide tactical support.”
The attack ranks as the “largest single massacre of Jewish people” since World War II.
Here, I want to mention another consideration that motivated Lord Roberts, in addition to respect for scholarship and truth: Christian morality.
“As a Gentile,” he writes in the foreword, “I believe that it is vital to prevent the emergence of another, more modern version of Holocaust denial, namely 7 October denial. After the Holocaust, non-Jews like me owe the Jewish people nothing less.”
By naming the victims — each and every one — and telling their stories, his report saves them from a statistical mass grave while bringing Hamas’ barbarism into sharp relief.
Start with the Nova Music Festival, where more than 370 people, most of them young, were killed in “the deadliest concert attack in history.” Among the incidents recounted:
Gabay could not run, so four other young women helped her get to an ambulance parked about 100 yards away. They hid inside the vehicle. It was already crammed with people. Hamas attackers arrived and saw immediately that people were hiding in the ambulance. At 9:23, having fired on it with their rifles, they fired a thermobaric rocket-propelled grenade into it. Of the 20 people inside, 18 were killed, including Gabay.
Among the dozens of other locations where Hamas slaughtered innocents, the farthest from Gaza and the deepest into Israel was the city of Ofakim, in the western Negev desert.
Many of Ofakim’s residents are descendants of immigrants from Morocco, Tunisia, India, Egypt and Ethiopia, along with “a number of Gazan families who worked with the Israeli authorities and were resettled in Israel” when, in 2005, Israel withdrew its civilians and troops entirely from Gaza in hopes of achieving peace.
A few brief extracts from the report’s descriptions of other atrocities in other locations that day:
• The attackers killed Yakov Yinon, 78, and Bilha Yinon, 75, who were lifelong peace activists, and the parents of activist Maoz Inon, 71. They were burned alive in their house.
• Shlomi and Ayalet Molcho were killed along with their dogs and the cats they looked after.
• Hamas gunmen screaming “al Yahud” (Yahud is the Arabic word for “the Jews”) entered a house, and Nadav Goldstein, the father, who tried to brandish a piece of the bed as a weapon, was immediately shot dead.
• Dafna, 15, and Ella, 8, were then taken by a separate vehicle into Gaza while their wounded father was taken there on foot. He did not survive the journey, and his body was found near the border fence 10 days later. The two girls were stoned by crowds when taken to captivity in Gaza.
• According to a neighbor, Yazan Zakaria, a 5-year-old Bedouin boy, “was standing at the door of his house near a car. When the rocket exploded, the car was blown out of place and burned with a number of other cars. … Yazan was killed. He was blown into parts.”
• Chen ran outside to check on the safety of her children and saw them standing with a group of terrorists. She then went back inside to Yam and found that she had been shot in the face.
I know: Few, if any, of today’s ignorant Ivy League students and the tenured activists who indoctrinate them are likely to read this report.
Still, its existence will make it more difficult for historians of the future to be misled. The truth — again, I insist there is such a thing — may therefore prevail over time.
If so, Lord Roberts will deserve immense credit and incalculable gratitude.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
