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Oct. 7 Was Worse than a Terror Attack; It Was a Pogrom

(Tablet) Deborah Danan - Eyal Barad, 40, was in the safe room of his home in Nir Oz for more than 12 hours on Oct. 7 while Palestinians went on a rampage of his kibbutz, kidnapping or murdering more than a quarter of its residents. On his phone he watched the live feed of a camera he had recently installed outside his home. Images from the feed, which I obtained, show Palestinian women and children taking part in the horror of that day. Survivors' accounts, video evidence, and the interrogation recordings of apprehended Palestinians paint a damning picture of the complicity of Gazan civilians both in the Oct. 7 attack and its aftermath. It challenges the inclination to draw distinctions between ordinary Palestinian civilians of Gaza and their terror leaders. For many, Oct. 7 reeked of something that Jews have been familiar with for centuries - where a society at large participates in the ritual slaughter of Jews. Around 700 Palestinians stormed Nir Oz - less than a five-minute drive from Gaza - CCTV footage shows. Eran Smilansky, a member of the kibbutz's security squad, estimated that the overwhelming majority of those, around 550, were civilians. Some carried out wholesale acts of terror themselves, including rape and abduction, while others abetted the terrorists. Others looted Israeli homes and farms, including stealing hundreds of thousands of shekels in agricultural equipment. Similar scenes played out in several of the more than 20 brutalized Israeli communities. In one video, an elderly Palestinian man with walking sticks is seen hobbling at an impressive clip along with the rest of the mob through the breached gate of Kibbutz Be'eri. Batya Holin is a photographer and peace activist from Kfar Aza, which was one of the heaviest-hit communities. Holin had developed a friendship with a Gazan photographer, Mahmoud, with whom she arranged a joint exhibit last year of photos of her kibbutz and his village in Gaza. On the morning of Oct. 7, Mahmoud called and interrogated Holin, asking her how many soldiers were in her vicinity. That was when Holin realized that Mahmoud had given the photos of her village to Hamas. "Whoever says there are people there who are uninvolved, here is the proof," she told Israel's Channel 13. "They are all involved. They are all Hamas." Nir Oz was home to scores of peace activists. Many now believe that while there are Gazans who want to live in peace, they do not represent the majority; or, as one survivor told AFP, "there are more who don't want us alive." Irit Lahav from Nir Oz, who shuttled Palestinian cancer patients several hours from the border with Gaza to their treatments in central Israel, told me, "How can we ever get over this sense of betrayal? The Palestinian public simply hates us." Nir Shani, from Be'eri, speaking of the involvement of Gazan civilians, said, "I don't differentiate between them and Hamas. Let me know of one Palestinian in Gaza who tried to save a Jew and maybe I'll change my mind."
2024-01-25 00:00:00
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