“I Can’t Wipe All the Blood From My Mind,” the October 7 Attack by Palestinian Armed Groups on Israel: This is the Name of the Report published by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), this Wednesday. The 236-page document focuses on listing all the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023. The humanitarian organization thus outlines the responsibility of Hamas, and the paramilitary groups that accompanied it, during this terrorist operation. The human toll of this fateful day amounts to 1,195 people killed, including 815 civilians, and 251 hostages captured, according to a figure produced by AFP. At the last count, there were still 116 in the hands of Hamas, held prisoner in the Gaza Strip.
The HRW report, while highlighting the al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of Hamas – also mentions the participation of four other militias, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These paramilitary groups are responsible for “hundreds of war crimes”, according to Belkis Wille, deputy director of the NGO’s Crisis and Conflicts division.
Hamas’s responsibility
To hold Hamas responsible, HRW relies on Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions: “The party rebelling against the legitimate government has an organized military force, an authority responsible for its acts, operating in a given territory and having the means to respect and ensure respect for the Convention.”
Among the abuses violating the laws of war, the report lists: “attacks targeting civilians and civilian objects; killings of persons in custody; cruel and other inhuman treatment; crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence; hostage-taking; mutilation and dispossession of bodies; use of human shields; and acts of pillaging and ransacking.”
The humanitarian organization questioned Hamas last February, which responded with a nine-page document. The Gazan group assured that its al-Qassam brigades had a “military doctrine of not targeting civilians.” To explain the abuses on Israeli territory, Hamas defends the idea that “people [NDLR : des Gazaouis] who were not participating in the military operation” joined in, causing “chaos on the ground and changing the plan for military targets.”
A long-term investigation
Hamas’ narrative is undermined by the investigation’s findings that it was a “coordinated and planned” event. “The attack by Hamas on October 7 was intended to kill civilians and take as many people hostage as possible,” said Ida Sawyer, crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.
In several places, “the fighters fired directly at civilians, often at point-blank range, as they tried to flee,” says Belkis Wille. Shortly after the terrorist attacks, the aid organization investigated on site. It stayed there for two months, in October and November, then continued remotely until June. The investigators sifted through 280 photos and videos. They were also able to interview 144 people, including 94 survivors of the terrorist attack.
All this work of testimony is expressed in the introduction of the report, where Sagi Shifroni, 41, recounts the morning of the massacre. Living in the border area with the Gaza Strip, he managed to find refuge in his safe roomwith his 5-year-old daughter, as a squad enters his home. Powerless, the two Israelis wait on the other side of the door that the attackers try to force, without success.
Failing to enter, the terrorists decide to set fire to the house and leave the premises. Forced to leave, Sagi wraps his daughter in sheets, asks her to press a pillow against her mouth to protect herself from the smoke. Seriously burned, he will not be taken to the hospital until midnight, waiting all day in the surrounding chaos.
Following the publication of the HRW investigation, Hamas denied it. “We reject the lies” in the report, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas said in a statement released Wednesday, denouncing “a blatant bias in favor” of Israel, whose army is still waging an offensive on Gazan territory.