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By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
After eleven months of painstaking investigation, the Israel Police reported Thursday that it had proof of Hamas terrorists’ massacre of fully 27 children during their October 7 invasion of Israel.
“We collected 11,666 videos that provide a comprehensive evidentiary basis gathered from various sources from just one kibbutz, which will enable us to file some of the most severe indictments against the perpetrators of these brutal terror acts,” said Superintendent Reut Anoim, head of Lahav 433’ cyber investigation division that led the meticulous effort.
Video evidence was collected from victims’ phones, home surveillance and street cameras in the entire Gaza envelope, as well as the GoPro cameras that the terrorists themselves wore to record their atrocities and the clips they posted to social media glorifying their war crimes.
Eyewitness testimony by survivors, evidence gathered by those finding the dead in the aftermath, such as volunteers of the ZAKA Search and Rescue units, together with the thorough work of forensic specialists examining the remains, were also used to prove conclusively that despite Hamas denials, its men murdered minors from infanthood to age 17 in horrific ways.
“That children were burned, shot and murdered alongside their parents is a proven fact,” said Dudi Katz, the head of the 433 cyber unit. “Children witnessed their parents being murdered and we found a scene with a pile of bodies from the same family more than once.”
In one case, Katz said, there was evidence that a young child of six or seven had been burned alive.
“His glazed expression indicated that he had been burned alive.”
The police were determined to build an airtight legal case against the perpetrators, ultimately going through over 200,000 video clips, some of which were found to be bogus.
“We worked hard to maintain the highest standards of verification and cross-referencing, compared to the fake materials circulating on social media,” Anoim said.
The question now is when will justice be served.
The IDF has captured thousands of Hamas terrorists since taking the war into Gaza, an unknown number of whom took part in the surprise attack in which 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were massacred overall and 251 taken hostage.
The army’s Unit 504, Shabak and police investigators have all participated in interrogating prisoners, with authorities even publicizing clips of some terrorists confessing the crimes they committed in Gaza envelope communities on the day Israel calls “the black Sabbath.”
Yet to date, no indictments have been filed against any terrorist. Israel has yet to decide whether to try them in a standard court, as if the Islamic extremists were regular, though heinous, criminals, in a military court as they acted as an organized, if illegal, fighting force, or in a special court, as terrorists are not legally defined as military personnel.
According to a Walla report last month, some people in the state prosecutor’s office want to delay bringing charges because of the possibility that captured terrorists may still shed light on additional murders their compatriots in prison have committed.
The police reacted to the report by saying that the arrest of Hamas fighters in Gaza is ongoing and will probably last a long time, and it is time to start using the mountains of evidence they have collected against specific terrorists.
