The atrocities witnessed by an Israeli emergency responder with two decades of experience in recovering bodies were beyond anything he had ever encountered before. Mendy Haviv, a commander of the rescue organization ZAKA, described the scenes he witnessed as hellish and difficult to handle. He spoke of finding the bodies of babies tied up and burned, with their parents slaughtered in front of them. In addition, he described burnt bodies, decapitated heads of children, and the overwhelming smell of rotting corpses. The horrors he witnessed were unimaginable.
The horrors in the communities near Gaza, which had been attacked by Hamas terrorists, were also described by other witnesses. In the kibbutz of Be’eri, only horrors and inhumanity remained. Haviv and his volunteers encountered booby traps placed under the victims’ bodies, and the whole situation left them in tears. Haviv explained that he wasn’t allowed to take photos of the victims but only took pictures of unique identifying marks for the purpose of identification.
Retired Lt. Col. Yaron Buskila, an Israeli Defense Force veteran, had a conversation with a rabbi who had gone into the affected kibbutzim to give the victims a proper Jewish burial. Buskila expressed deep regret about the conversation, as the horrifying descriptions of what the rabbi had seen left him feeling sick. He talked about children and adults being decapitated and babies being hanged in a row with their mothers’ bras.
These accounts come amidst a heated debate on social media about claims of Hamas terrorists beheading babies. President Joe Biden had mentioned having seen photographic evidence of this, although the White House later clarified that he hadn’t seen confirmed pictures but had based his comments on news reports. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office released gruesome photos purporting to show babies “murdered and burned” by Hamas.
During his trip to Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that they had seen photographs and videos shared by the Israeli government, and some of the images reminded him of ISIS crimes. He struggled to find the right words to describe the depravity and inhumanity of the situation. He compared it to the atrocities committed by ISIS in the past, which thankfully were stopped.