There is no more hiding from the chilling truth of 7 October

The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report, chaired by Lord Andrew Roberts, has now been published. It provides a meticulously researched, forensic account of the atrocities committed against Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Compiled by the UK-Israel All Party Parliamentary Group, this report is an essential document, recording in stark detail the murder, torture, and sexual violence inflicted upon innocent civilians. It ensures that this horror is preserved in the historical record, beyond the reach of those who would seek to distort or deny it.

That such a report is necessary at all speaks to the disturbing times we live in. The idea that a massacre of nearly 1,200 people, the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, might require Britain’s parliament to painstakingly document it to secure belief is obscene. And yet, this is the world in which we find ourselves. A world where Jewish suffering is questioned, where atrocities against Israelis are met not with immediate, unqualified horror but with hedging, justification, or outright denial. That is why the work of Lord Roberts and his parliamentary colleagues is so crucial. It is not simply about recording history; it is about ensuring that history cannot be rewritten by those with a vested interest in its erasure.

Andrew Roberts is among Britain’s most distinguished historians, known for his scholarship on Churchill, Napoleon, and the second world war. . . But Roberts’ role is not only as a chronicler of the past; it is as a guardian of truth in the present. He understands that historical memory is not merely about what happened – it is about what societies are willing to accept as fact.

Andrew Roberts: Why we wrote the 7 October parliamentary report

Amnesty International and Harvard,’ says Alan Dershowitz of the 7 October 2023 massacre, ‘blamed it on Israel even before the first shot was fired in Gaza.’ It was true; the Israel Defence Force (IDF) did not enter Gaza until 27 October, but already there were ‘River to Sea’ anti-Israel demonstrations, anti-Semitic posts on TikTok, the first stirrings of the Tentifada movement on campuses, a deafening silence in the United Nations (especially from its women’s committee which was to take six months to denounce the mass rapine) and a worldwide attempt to blame 7 October on its victims rather than its perpetrators.

There is therefore every reason to return to the actual events of 7 October, which the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) has done with our report. It details precisely what happened between 6.29 a.m. when Hamas-led terrorists breached the defences in Southern Israel, and over 48 hours later, when the last of them had retreated back into Gaza, or were captured or killed.

The circumstances of all the 1,182 deaths that took place on that horrific day are documented in our report, which at times necessarily makes somewhat gruesome reading. ;But it reminds us of the sheer sadism, rapine and viciousness that was planned and premeditated. A UN report mentioned ‘fully or partially naked bodies from the waist down [that] were recovered – mostly women – with hands ted and shot multiple times, often in the head.’

Helena Cobban, who co-authored the book Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters that was recently launched at the London School of Economics (LSE) – to its shame – has claimed that ‘a lot of what Hamas did on 7 October was to attack military targets,’ amongst other justifications. Our report comprehensively disproves that, showing that the moment that Hamas managed to prevent the IDF from counter-attacking, it got down to what it had really set out to do all along: slaughtering Israelis. Citizens from forty-four nations were also killed and taken hostage in its bloodlust. . . Jews, Zionists, Gentiles, and non-Zionists were killed in a mass murder frenzy reminiscent of the Rape of Nanjing of 1937.

Another reason for writing our report is because of claims that the massacres did not happen. Hamas and its allies, both in the Middle East and equally shamefully in the West, have sought to deny the atrocities altogether. This is despite the ironic fact that much of the evidence for the massacres derives come from film footage from cameras carried by the terrorists themselves – though of course there is also much more from many other sources, as this Report delineates.

We have allowed no embellishment of the facts, which are painful and distressing enough as they are. We have gone out of our way not to include information that we suspect is true but cannot be double-checked. We have done this so that future generations will not be misled about the true extent and the horror of the massacre. Our generation, however, can read the report here.

The youngest victim of the Oct 7 massacre was just 14 hours old, a UK parliamentary report has found. The study also disclosed the existence of another Briton who died in the attack, bringing the total number of UK citizens killed to 18.

It also confirmed that the desecration of corpses had been “widespread”, including the beheading and mutilation of dead bodies which had also been booby-trapped with grenades.

The youngest victim was identified as Naama abu Rashed, who suffered a gunshot wound while still in her mother’s womb. She died just 14 hours after doctors performed an emergency delivery. The baby, the daughter of Bedouin parents, was born alive but died at 10pm on the day of the attacks.

Her mother – also named Naama – had woken her husband in the early hours of Oct 7 to tell him that she had started to have labour pains. She was nine months pregnant. The family, who are Israeli citizens, left their home in Ar’ara, according to the parliamentary report, travelling at speed in the direction of Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheba. However, Hamas terrorists had set up a blockade at a road junction.

“At the Magen junction they came up to two vehicles that had stopped. Abu Rashed ‘blinked his lights’ and saw a truck with a carpet in the back. Suddenly, someone in the truck moved the carpet to reveal a machine gun and opened fire at the car. It then drove away.

“Naama alerted her husband that she was bleeding from her stomach and they tried to race to the hospital.”

But Naama’s husband Tarafi was forced to pull over a second time to change a tyre that had been shot out by the gunmen. The family came under Hamas attack a second time before an Israeli ambulance arrived and rushed them to hospital.

The report stated: “Naama survived, but the bullet had hit the baby, still in the uterus, in her leg… Although the baby was born alive – and was named Na’ama – she died at 22:00.63. At 14 hours old, she was the youngest of Hamas’ victims on Oct 7.”

Lord Roberts’ report has received backing from fellow historians in providing an “irrefutable record” of what happened on Oct 7.

Sir Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at Harvard and Stanford universities, said: “Those who wish to understand the repulsive, pathological nature of anti-Semitism should read the report. Those who doubt the truly evil character of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad must read it.”

Simon Sebag Montefiore described the report as “an important and essential record, chronicle and investigation of one of the most atrocious crimes of terroristic barbarity in modern history”.