Human Rights Watch Verification

"Palestinian fighters [aka terrorists] committed killings,  hostage-taking, and other war crimes, including the crimes against humanity of murder and wrongful imprisonment." 

"Across many attack sites, Palestinian fighters [terrorists] fired directly at civilians, often at close range, as they tried to flee. They hurled grenades, shot into shelters, and fired rocket-propelled grenades at homes."

"They set houses on fire, burning and choking people, and forced out others whom they shot or captured."

"They took dozens hostage and summarily killed others."

Human Rights Watch report

The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip, in July 2023. A Human Rights Watch report published Wednesday says Hamas and at least four other armed groups committed war crimes during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel. (Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Human Rights Watch had investigators on the scene in southern Israel just days after the horrendous October 7 mass slaughter of mostly 1,200 civilian Israelis. They meticulously examined evidence in abundance at the various border-vulnerable kibbutzim, and at the site of the Nova Music Festival for obvious clues on the dread inhuman performance of terrorists they still insist on characterizing as 'fighters'. 

 

Despite a richness of irrefutable evidence, backed by the videos taken by the perpetrators of the savage carnage and interviews with many concerned as witnesses, it has taken HRW nine months to produce a report.

This is, after all, a group that bills itself as a neutral observer of violations of human rights that often feels compelled to link Israel with human rights abuses. The jaundiced eye of those working with and for Human Rights Watch have had no excess of affection for the State of Israel in the many instances where their blatant antisemitism comes to the fore. 

However, beloved of the left 'progressives' their conclusions of Palestinian terrorist groups having committed sadistic barbarism beyond the imagination of sane and humane minds will to a degree, have the influence of a trusted source. That in and of itself is a positive, given the racist, anti-Jewish bias that has evolved in politically left circles, and exploded in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas-led incursion of thousands of Palestinian terrorists into Israel.

 

Israeli soldier at Memorial site in Re'im, southern Israel  Photo: Jim Hollander, UPI

 

The human rights group that has pilloried Israel in the recent past for "apartheid and persecution" despite the clearly obvious fact that millions of Palestinians have citizenship in Israel with the right to vote for their own candidates to sit in the Knesset, that everyone in Israel, has the right to worship (or not) their own religious devotion, and is viewed as equal under the law, makes their claims beyond ridiculous. 

That oldest of racist slurs against any ethnic/cultural/historic/religious group has been reawakened with a fury. And it manifests itself at a time when Jews in Israel were attacked by relentless haters, following a well-rehearsed script of antisemitic determination to extinguish as many Jewish lives as possible,while simultaneously executing a pre-planned scheme of terror, humiliation, torture, mutilation and murder, aimed at families, the elderly, children and infants, women and men who had before the event exhibited sympathy for their neighbours.

Palestinian terrorists move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.

Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images