“Eitan Kunio heard the terrorists enter his house and watched as fuel seeped under the door of the garage where he hid with his wife and two children.” Recently major newspapers in the world including testimonies, descriptions and stories that are difficult to read.
The Wall Street Journal’s investigation is based on parts of approximately 200,000 photographs and videos and approximately 2,000 testimonies that Israeli investigators are now using to reconstruct what happened; This, in order to build a legal case against Hamas, which will meet international standards and provide complete historical documentation for the October 7 attack.
In the investigation, reporters from the Wall Street Journal examined some of the evidence, interviewed first aid teams that arrived in the Gaza Envelope, survivors, victims’ families and forensic scientists, to document an attack that Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai described as “systematic and unprecedented in its cruelty.”
In the investigative article published by the Wall Street Journal, it was noted that the IDF’s focus on fighting in the area for days after the attack, along with the severity of the cases, posed many challenges to the investigation, and the Journal viewed scans of remains that were able to explain what happened in some cases.
Konio’s story is just one of the difficult cases brought up by the investigation. “His one-year-old daughter cried when the family home in Kibbutz Nir Oz was set on fire and smoke began to enter the room,” the investigation described. “Konio put wet sheets at the bottom of the door and told his family that they would stay inside instead of being murdered or kidnapped. If we die, we will die together at home, he said. Before passing out, Konio sent a tearful voice note to a member of his community: ‘This is terrible. We are going to die.'”
In the continuation of the investigation, the continuation of Konio’s story is presented. At about 1:00 p.m., Eitan regained consciousness when a friend called and said he was coming to pick them up. With the help of a neighbor, the friend broke into the Kunio couple’s bedroom, and pulled the family from the charred ruins of their home. According to his testimony, Eitan was relieved to be alive, but then he learned that eight of his family members, including his twin brother, David, had been kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Later, he learned that his neighbor’s family had been killed. Five of Eitan Kunio’s family members were released last month in the prisoner deal, but his twin brother and younger brother and his girlfriend are still hostages.
Additional photos and forensic evidence shared with the Journal by Israeli officials show particularly difficult cases that occurred on that Black Sabbath, and the investigation details them tirelessly, including sexual assaults, mutilation of bodies, and abuse. At the same time as the testimonies, the Wall Street Journal cites the denial of senior Hamas officials, according to which their fighters “did not kill children and rape women.”
“The State of Israel has never dealt with crimes on such a scale”
“Israel’s investigation is expected to yield a trial that will be the most significant in the country since the early 1960s, when Israel captured, tried and hanged Adolf Eichmann for his central role in the Holocaust,” the newspaper said. Roy Sheindorf, former Deputy Attorney General, was quoted as saying that “the State of Israel has never dealt with crimes and investigations on such a scale”, and that “this will be one of the most important trials that have taken place in Israel”.
It was also noted that the Israel Police are checking evidence of captured terrorists, camera footage obtained from them, social media, dashboards and security cameras of vehicles throughout southern Israel, as well as materials seized in Gaza. The investigation added and explained that “an accompanying goal of Israel’s investigation can also be the preservation of history, similar to the Eichmann trial, which presented the final solution of Nazi Germany to the world, and opened a process in which witnesses came forward en masse to talk about the horrors they experienced.”
Some of the documentation from the first moments of October 7 comes from the terrorists, who published videos of many of their actions, including some of the murders and kidnappings on the victims’ social media pages, in front of friends and family. The Journal viewed videos that are no longer available online. In one of them, terrorists are seen breaking into the house of Noam Alikim, shooting him in the leg, “and then they took his wife’s phone and filmed the family members becoming hostages live on Facebook.”
The investigation brings, among other things, the story of the Kotz family, who lived three kilometers east of the Gaza border, in Kfar Gaza, a community of 950 people. On October 7, terrorists landed with paragliders on a sports field, where later that day residents were planning an annual kite-flying festival. The festival, which over the years has become a gesture of peace for the residents of Gaza, was organized by Aviv Kotz (53), his wife Livnat (49) and their three teenage children. They hoped the Gazans would see the kites and fly theirs in return, according to Aviv’s father, Benny Kotz.
The family was one of the first to be murdered on October 7, even before 6:30 in the morning, according to a volunteer for collecting bodies and Bene Kotz.
Hamas terrorists sexually assaulted women at the Nova festival
The Wall Street Journal investigation describes the massacre that took place about 20 kilometers away, when dozens of terrorists invaded the Nuva festival in an open field near the Gaza border. One of the testimonies that the journal brings is that of Eitan Gonen, the father of Rumi Gonen, a 23-year-old young woman held captive by Hamas. Rumi Gonen went to a party with her best friend, and her father described to the Journal that his house called while she was trying to hide from the terrorists.
After that, the investigation describes the short-lived relief the father felt when Rumi called and said that one of her friends had found her and was evacuating her by car from the festival grounds. “The burden has been lifted from my chest,” said Eitan Gonen. The elation was short-lived. A moment later, when the car was attacked, she was shot in the arm and her friends were killed.
The investigation notes that new details about sexual violence are also emerging. Investigators initially found no rape survivors, but since then, at least three women have come forward to the Ministry of Welfare and testified that they experienced sexual violence, according to Ayelet Razin Beit Or, a former government official assisting in the investigation.
According to testimonies collected by the Wall Street Journal from the police, at the festival Hamas terrorists began sexually assaulting women. Among other things, the investigation describes that the terrorists took women with them back to Gaza, according to videos distributed on Telegram.
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