A month has passed since the massacre on October 7th, in which Hamas slaughtered some 1400 Israeli residents, but the shocking testimonies are only now emerging as the Israel Police's Lahav 433, the police department dealing with serious felonies, continues with the meticulous documentation of the atrocities.
As part of this process, the detectives have been processing the testimonies of the perpetrators and the survivors. One of them is a chilling testimony of a young woman who hid with her boyfriend in a shelter, where she witnessed the rape and murder of another Israeli woman.
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"I saw them forcing her to bend forward and then someone rape her," the testimony reads. "They were dressed in olive-toned fatigues, she was alive, and then she fell silent. She was raped and then killed."
For the first time, the investigators were exposed to messages from members of ZAKA volunteers describing the horrifying events as they collected bodies. These official testimonies will be used in legal proceedings in the future against Hamas and as a way to remember the atrocities. The testimonies are quite graphic and include descriptions of the horrors they witnessed when they arrived at the scenes of death to collect the remains of the victims. They too, have confirmed through their testimony that Hamas terrorists committed sexual offenses against women before killing them.
Video: People taking cover, smoke billows as Gaza rockets pound Israel / Credit: Reuters
According to the testimonies of the volunteers, there were also sexual abuses against some of the men who were found. In some cases, the victim's private parts were mutilated. One member said that in many cases, "it was hard to tell if it was a man or a woman."
Unit Lahav 433 is constantly collaborating with the Shin Bet security agency and other security agencies in the interrogation of the captured terrorists. Through their investigations, the police aim to assign collective responsibility for the massacre. In one of the investigations, a Hamas operative described how he killed a man and a woman with a hammer.
As part of building the case against the Gaza Islamic terrorist group, the investigators have to collect testimonies from survivors classified as "victims of an offense" and "witnesses." "It is challenging to establish contact with people who have undergone such trauma," the members of Lahav 433 told Israel Hayom. "It requires emotional and mental intelligence." The unit is confident that this is the biggest case Israel has ever seen, even more significant than Adolf Eichmann's prosecution for his role in orchestrating the Holocaust as a senior Nazi official. In the case of prisoner exchanges, the testimonies and evidence could also be used in international lawsuits.
One of the horrifying calls that reached the police during the massacre was from a 15-year-old girl. "I'm a 15-year-old girl, I have school tomorrow," the girl said on the phone just before the terrorist holding her took her device. The dispatcher tried to beg for the girl's life, but it was in vain, and she was killed. "A significant portion of the murders were committed by civilians," emphasized the detectives of Lahav 433.
The investigators say that they want to prove that the Hamas atrocities were systematic and premeditated. Furthermore, the investigators succeeded in monitoring the Hamas groups on Telegram, where the terrorists sent some of the documentation of their crimes to encourage each other. It was revealed in the investigation that for every team of terrorists, there were also documenters who recorded the atrocities on GoPro cameras and used smartphones to livestream the massacre to their commanders in Gaza.
At the top levels of Lahav 433, they say that some social networks like Facebook and Instagram cooperate with them, while others have been less cooperative. "Not everyone has shifted to a war mode," said the police, adding that they estimate it will take many more weeks to collect all the materials.
At this stage, the police refuse to disclose whether individuals from within Israel assisted the Hamas attack, but they mention that there is evidence that even non-residents of Gaza participated in the massacre. It is emphasized that a few days after the massacre, survivors reported that they had heard Hamas terrorists speaking among themselves in Persian.
One of the Hamas operatives who was captured described in his interrogation that each cell had a mission, and the terrorists were divided into squads for training. He described how they trained for years and went through small-scale drills to avoid failure. Each cell received a battle plan, and only the cell leaders knew about the first three missions to prevent leaks.
The terrorists had ambitious plans, one of which was to take over a settlement and hold its residents hostage.
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