In a chilling report released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch declared the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and other militant groups as a meticulously planned and heartless assault on civilians. Survivors, hostages, first responders, and witnesses were interviewed for months in order to compile this damning condemnation of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel’s government reported approximately 1,200 deaths during the ambush, catching both civilians and the military off guard as militants infiltrated the country’s southern borders. The thorough report is the most extensive accusation of war crimes in the Oct. 7 attack, involving Hamas and four other armed Palestinian groups.
Hamas, in response to queries from Human Rights Watch, claimed it instructed militants not to target civilians and shifted the blame to unaffiliated Gazans who took advantage of the chaos. The influx of unaffiliated Palestinians and other armed groups led to multiple errors, according to the report.
As the war in Gaza rages on, with Israeli forces accused of further war crimes, the death toll continues to climb, primarily affecting women and children. The Israel Defense Forces boasted about successfully neutralizing thousands of militants and eliminating half of Hamas’s military leadership, though these figures are yet to be independently verified.
Recent scrutiny following the IDF’s internal investigation into the Oct. 7 response revealed grave mistakes in defending Kibbutz Beeri near the Gaza border. Individual commanders were not condemned despite admitting to severe errors. The investigation also uncovered instances of militants using civilians as human shields, a blatant violation of international law.
Shocking details in the report also highlight ruthless acts of torture committed by militants, including dragging women by their hair and assaulting abducted individuals. Evidence of sexual and gender-based violence, as well as the posting of inappropriate content on social media, paints a grim picture of the atrocities that occurred on that fateful day.
While the report acknowledges challenges in documenting cases of rape, it emphasizes that the true extent of sexual violence on Oct. 7 may never be fully known due to various factors. The stigma and trauma surrounding rape, coupled with the likelihood that many victims perished, further obscure the grim reality of that tragic day. The refusal of the Israeli government to provide information on such violence only adds to the complexity of unraveling the events of the attack.
