In a series of harrowing revelations this week, Israeli security agencies unveiled video footage from the interrogations of captured Hamas militants. The confessions, punctuated with explicit details, have laid bare the depth of atrocities committed during the Palestinian group's recent attack on Israel.
A masked individual, whose identity remains concealed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), delivered a bone-chilling account. "The plan was to go from home to home, from room to room, to throw grenades and kill everyone, including women and children," he confessed. "Hamas ordered us to crush their heads and cut them off, [and] to cut their legs." An equally horrifying revelation was the explicit directive purportedly given to the gunmen: they were given permission "to rape the corpse of a girl."
This was not an isolated confession. Additional footage, courtesy of the Shin Bet and the Israel Police, featured excerpts from the questioning of several members of Hamas's elite Nukhba forces. One of them chillingly revealed, "In Gaza, those who bring hostages get a grant - an apartment and $10,000." Another stated, quoting his orders, to "kidnap the elderly, women and children."
While the numbers already paint a grim picture, with about 1,400 individuals, predominantly civilians, dead in the aftermath of the onslaught, these confessions provide an unprecedented insight into the minds and orders of the assailants. Many were killed in their homes, some during an outdoor music festival, and others on military bases close to the border.
Yet, the weight of these confessions transcends mere numbers. An unidentified 24-year-old purported "engineer and soldier" in the attacks, in another IDF-released video, noted the disparity between his religious teachings and the commands given. He said, "In the army they tell us to kill, massacre them everywhere. Women and children and so on. In the religion, they say it is forbidden to kill children, women, the elderly." This juxtaposition further elucidated when he recounted an order: "stomp on their heads, behead them, do whatever you want with them."
The IDF just screened 43 minutes of horrors from the Hamas massacre on October 7 for foreign journalists. I was not there, my colleague @cjkeller8 was.
Here is the one minute of footage approved for mass publication at this point, barring most of it out of respect for the dead. pic.twitter.com/UDmQSrkYBL — Amy Spiro (@AmySpiro) October 23, 2023
The brutality evoked comparisons with another notorious group, as the same 24-year-old observed, "ISIS burns, beheads and butchers...Hamas became ISIS."
In a pressing effort to validate these accounts and quell doubts about Hamas's actions, the Israeli government showcased nearly 43 minutes of jarring footage, capturing scenes of murder, torture, and decapitation, to 200 foreign press members. Though journalists were not allowed to document this screening, its intention was clear. The government aimed to challenge what was described as "a Holocaust-denial-like phenomenon happening in real-time," referencing the skepticism about Hamas's reported crimes.
It remains to be seen how these revelations will shape global perceptions or drive policy decisions. Yet, the chilling direct testimonies from the captured militants themselves offer an undistorted lens into the dark heart of the October 7 attack.
