HAMAS AND GAZAN ATROCITIES DOCUMENTED

Truth matters: Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks now documented for history

Lord Roberts' parliamentary report combats denial with evidence 

 

By Clifford D. May

 

JNS

Apr 23, 2025 

 Children's toys and personal items lie on the bloodstained floor of a child's bedroom, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen and Gaza residents, in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel

 

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 Gaza, 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.

Andrew Roberts, 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.

So he did the hard work necessary to produce the “7 October Parliamentary Commission Report Chaired by Lord Roberts of Belgravia.”

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—one of the most lethal terrorist attacks in history.

Almost three out of four 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, in addition to respect for scholarship and truth, motivated Lord Roberts: 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.”

And by naming the victims—each and every one—and telling their stories, his report saves them from a statistical mass grave while bringing Hamas’s barbarism into sharp relief.

Start with the Nova Music Festival where more than 370 people—most of them young—were murdered 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 meters away. They hid inside the vehicle. It was already crammed with people. Hamas attackers arrived and saw immediately that there were people hiding in the ambulance. At 09:23, 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 furthest 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—lifelong peace activists, and the parents of well-known activist Maoz Inon, 71. They were burnt 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 the house and Nadav Goldstein, who tried to brandish a piece of the bed as a weapon, was immediately shot dead.

• Dafna, 15, and Ella, 8, were taken by a separate vehicle into Gaza while their wounded father was taken there by 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 neighbour, 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.

But 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.