We have been travelling to the numerous totally different scenes the place Hamas fighters carried out their terror assault on Israel this week, and it’s changing into clear that their techniques and ranges of brutality modified from location to location.
Warning – this story incorporates descriptions and footage of a graphic nature
Within the attack on the Nova music festival, for instance, the gunmen kidnapped a number of the partygoers, after which murdered many extra, spraying them with gunfire and throwing grenades into locations they had been hiding.
The hiding locations included bathrooms, dust bins, automobiles, and bomb shelters.
Hundreds died on the competition.
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Within the varied kibbutzim they attacked close by, their behaviour descended to a complete new degree of depravity.
They did not simply kill – they took their time. They sure households, tortured them, and finally murdered them.
That is one thing essentially totally different to the behaviours of Hamas we now have seen previously.
I’ve met Hamas on many events and interviewed their fighters.
They had been at all times way more like a militia at battle with Israel, moderately than bloodthirsty killers and torturers.
One thing has modified.
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Home in southern Israel hit by Hamas rocket
Our bodies ‘inform tales of torture’
The testimony of the individuals charged with recovering the {dead} is disturbing and troublesome to hearken to, however they need everybody to grasp simply how horrific it was.
Zaka, a volunteer civilian emergency response organisation charged with recovering the our bodies right here, remains to be discovering our bodies of the victims over every week later.
Yossi Landau is the boss for the southern area – he has been doing this work for 33 years all around the world.
He tells me the newest individual to be discovered on the Kfar Aza kibbutz has been beheaded.
An Israeli flag outdoors a home
He says: “We thought we completed however we got here again now this morning after being every week round right here, and we simply pulled out a physique over right here – no head – it is the worst…”
He tells me he has by no means seen something like this, and that the sheer brutality of Hamas has surprised his complete workforce.
“We noticed girls with no garments and fingers tied to the again,” he says. “We noticed households… over right here on this kibbutz I noticed households with fingers tied to the again, sitting dad and mom and kids, sitting one in opposition to the opposite, tortured.
“We may see the our bodies had been telling the tales.
“You realize they cannot speak however they had been telling us their tales, they had been crying along with us.”
Yossi Landau with members of Zaka
‘That is a battle crime’
Yossi and his workforce have carried out their work in any respect the websites of Saturday’s rampage.
He says there are noticeable variations between the best way individuals had been killed on the varied places.
“By the competition, they weren’t tortured – there was no torture as a result of all the pieces was on a subject and so they had no time for doing that,” he explains.
“There was no torturing, it was mass killing – like in the event that they had been hiding in a rubbish can or one thing, they threw in a grenade to ensure everybody was killed.
“That is a battle crime for itself, and most of them, I’d say 70%, had been shot within the again – that is a battle crime.”
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He continued: “In Kfar Aza and Be’eri, we’re speaking a few whole of 280 our bodies, 280 casualties.
“I’d say 80% was tortured, and also you’re speaking kids, adults…
“You are speaking a pile, two piles – once we discovered them in Be’eri, two piles of ten kids every had been tied to the again, burnt to demise…”
He says so far as he can inform, Hamas’s killers had time to do no matter they wished.
“That they had the time, no person bothered them, they’d the manpower – I would not name it manpower – the butcher energy…”
Yossi Landau is Zaka’s southern area boss
‘We accumulate the terrorists’
After we met up with Yossi and his workforce, they’d simply been tasked with recovering the our bodies of these gunmen.
We journey to 1 space of kibbutz Kfar Aza and are circled – a soldier says it is too harmful.
Yossi needs to choose up the our bodies – the soldier says he cannot.
They agree a digger will go ahead and choose up the {dead}, and we take one other route to a different website to gather a handful of our bodies.
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The {dead} fighters are gathered collectively and positioned in particular person physique baggage.
Utilizing a can of spray paint, members of Zaka then mark the baggage with an X, designating that they don’t seem to be civilians however that they’re the our bodies of the killers.
The our bodies are then scooped up from the bottom with a forklift and transferred onto a bulldozer.
Zaka already is aware of that their groups are struggling excessive psychological stress.
Their households have been briefed to move up the road if their family members are behaving abnormally, to allow them to get assist.
Broken automobiles close to a kibbutz
Yossi says humanely retrieving the very individuals who carried out the assault is itself “very troublesome” to do as a result of they “killed our brothers and sisters and tortured the individuals”.
However he says it is what they do.
“We do it for the households, for the {dead} individuals, and sadly we do it for the terrorists too…
“We accumulate the terrorists, we make certain they get in physique baggage, they go in for identification and so they’re being saved, however that is not our division it goes additional.
“However we now have to make it possible for to honour – that is our faith, to honour demise and life – as a result of everybody has a household behind them, and that is Zaka’s work.”