On July 17, Human Rights Watch posted a controversial report in which it unfairly accuses Hamas and four other Palestinian resistance groups of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
By Fabio Bosco
Among other accusations, the report states that the Palestinian resistance, in a planned and deliberate action, executed 1,195 people, of which 815 were civilians, and took 251 prisoners.
These conclusions are based on 144 testimonies, including 94 witnesses to the action, and 280 photographs and videos (1).
What happened during the attack
The best investigative documentary on October 7 to date was produced by Al-Jazeera based on available information. In general terms, he gives the following report (2).
At 6 am on October 7, 2023, around 1,200 Palestinian resistance fighters led by Hamas gathered and received instructions on the attack. They were military combat instructions that explained which weapons were suitable for attacking tanks and armored vehicles.
At 6:30 am, fighters broke the barrier between the Gaza Strip and 1948 Palestine (the territories occupied by Israel in 1948) at ten points carrying light lethal weapons (machine guns and portable anti-tank missiles). The vast majority entered by land, walking, or in ordinary vehicles, while some entered by sea and air using improvised devices. Simultaneously, drones were launched against Israeli communications system towers and antennas and thousands of rockets were launched from Gaza.
Despite the Israeli intelligence service having gathered information about the preparations for the attack for months (and having received a warning from the Egyptian intelligence service a few days before the attack) no measures were taken, there was no increase in troops on the border and bases, and Israeli military personnel were caught by surprise, becoming an easy prey for Palestinian fighters.
Fighters seized military bases and executed Israeli soldiers. Without encountering resistance, the fighters came across a party bringing together hundreds of young people (certainly the majority of them were active or reserve soldiers, as military enlistment is compulsory exempting the Arabs and the Haredim Jews only) and executed several of them. They also entered nearby Israeli settlements (kibbutz).
At 8:30 am, a few hundred Gaza residents, voluntarily and disorderly, passed through the barrier and reached Israeli settlements. 253 Israelis were arrested and taken to Gaza.
At 9:00 am, Israeli troops began arriving in the region with helicopters and tanks. They attacked any human target, and in this way, killed both Palestinians and Israelis.
In total, 1,154 Israelis and foreigners were killed, of which 782 were civilians, and 372 were Israeli soldiers and police. In addition to these, around 200 Palestinians were killed.
Who killed the Israeli soldiers and civilians?
The State of Israel has never accepted an independent investigation into the events of October 7 and has never allowed investigators access to the bodies of those killed.
An example of that was the treatment given to the commission of inquiry appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to gather evidence and identify perpetrators of human rights violations, which would eventually serve as the basis for war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court.
Chris Sidoti, one of the three members of the commission stated on April 16 that “So far as the government of Israel is concerned, we have not only seen a lack of cooperation, but active obstruction of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims to the events that occurred in southern Israel” (3).
So far it is not known how many were killed by Palestinian fighters and how many were killed by Israeli troops. According to a report in the newspaper Haaretz on July 7, 2024, several were killed by Israeli troops to prevent the Palestinian resistance from taking prisoners, the so-called Hannibal protocol (4).
Among the 782 civilians, 36 were minors, 13 under 12 years of age. There was no murder of 40 babies, nor did any of the dead have their heads cut off as the Israeli and Western press claimed in the first days after the attack. The rape allegations were never independently investigated because the Israeli government never allowed the UN Commission of Inquiry to do so.
The place of October 7th in history
The attack by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas placed the Palestinian issue back on the world agenda. In this way, the normalization of relations between most Arab countries and Israel was frozen. The attack also exposed the weaknesses in Israel’s security policy based on ethnic cleansing and the apartheid system, and thus demoralized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and probably sealed his fate.
The attack was labelled ‘terrorist’ by the great imperialist powers all over the world. Unfortunately, the Human Rights Watch report ends up adding to the condemnation of the resistance.
The report errs in not requiring that autopsies and forensic examinations be carried out by independent criminal examiners to determine the cause of death and, eventually, the executioners.
The most important error, however, is to decontextualize the attacks of October 7 from the historical situation of 75 years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing to which the Palestinian people have been subjected, and to disregard the right of resistance, including armed resistance, of the people living under occupation.
At no point does the report remember that the Palestinian resistance, when taking Israeli prisoners, has the sole objective of exchanging them for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners that the occupying power holds, many of whom have been jailed without any formal charges. Haven’t people living under occupation the right to take prisoners from the occupying power in exchange for their own?
Dissenting voices
Under the heat of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the massacres in the West Bank and the repression in Al-Quds/Jerusalem and throughout occupied 1948 Palestine, the Palestinian people and voices of important American intellectuals of Jewish origin disagree with the definition of “terrorist attack” and the condemnation of the October 7 attacks.
To date, 71% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank agree with the decision of the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance to launch the attack despite the enormous material and human cost. And 90% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank understand that the Palestinian resistance did not commit any atrocities (5).
Judith Butler, American professor and philosopher, daughter of Jewish immigrants, at a round table in Paris on March 3, stated that the October 7 attack can be characterized neither as a terrorist act, nor an anti-Semitic attack. They called the attack an “act of armed resistance” (6).
A very interesting reflection was made by the American Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein. Son of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, he is the author of several works on the Palestinian issue, among which “The Holocaust Industry” stands out.
In an interview with Marc Lamont Hill, Professor Finkelstein compared the October 7 attack with the famous 1831 rebellion of enslaved black people led by Nat Turner in the state of Virginia (United States). In this rebellion, the enslaved killed around 60 white citizens. According to historians, these deaths did not happen by chance. The leader of the rebellion, Nat Turner, gave instructions to kill all the white people in sight.
The reaction of white slavers was brutal. In addition to calling the black rebellion an atrocity, 120 black slaves were immediately lynched, and another 80 were sentenced to death and hanged. Additionally, new slave laws were imposed prohibiting black literacy and the gathering of black people for any purpose.
Nat Turner’s rebellion inspired John Brown to lead a raid on the armory at Harpers’ Ferry, Virginia in 1859 with the aim of starting an armed uprising against slavery. Arrested, he was sentenced to death on the gallows.
Both rebellions were blatantly called atrocities by slavery authorities. However, today, after the end of slavery and the achievements of the civil rights movement, both rebellions are considered milestones in the fight against slavery. Nat Turner and John Brown hold an honored place in the pantheon of heroes who fought for freedom. Would Human Rights Watch convict them of war crimes and crimes against humanity retroactively? (7)
It is still too early to know whether the October 7 attack was another moment in the Palestinian struggle for their liberation, or whether it was a turning point against the racist State of Israel. Time will tell.
Many criticize the October 7 attack for its violence. Professor Finkelstein raises the question: what options are available to the Palestinian resistance? Hamas won the elections in 2006 and the reaction of Israel, the United States and Europe was to impose a blockade against the Gaza strip, transforming it into a large concentration camp. Hamas proposed a long-term truce (hudna in Arabic) but Israel never agreed to negotiate. What alternative was left other than armed resistance?
Still on violence, the famous playwright and poet Bertold Brecht, in a critique of the plutocratic historiography of elites and victors, wrote:
“The river that everything drags is known as violent, but nobody calls violent the margins that arrest him.”
Notes:
(1)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/17/october-7-crimes-against-humanity-war-crimes-hamas-led-groups
(2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0atzea-mPY
(3)
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-commission-accuses-israel-obstructing-oct-7-probe-2024-04-16/
(4)
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000
(5)
https://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/969
(6) https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/03/15/judith-butler-by-calling-hamas-attacks-an-act-of-armed-resistance-rekindles-controversy-on-the-left_6621775_23.html
(7) https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2024/4/5/norman-finkelstein-on-gaza-the-us-couldve-stopped-israel-on-day-one
