At kibbutz Nir Oz—a quiet haven with four hundred farmers until, astonishingly, a quarter of the population was kidnapped by Hamas squads—mail photographer Roland Hoskins and I encountered sights we wished we’d never seen.
In a house with a colorful children’s playhouse in the yard and toddler toys everywhere, there was an upside-down child’s bed, right next to a large, thick pool of congealed blood. There was a putrid smell of death in the air, full of buzzing flies, and I almost threw up.
Elsewhere, a girl of about six, a boy of seven, kneeling, with their heads down and their hands tied behind their backs.
On the other side of the dining table, where a family feast had been prepared, the father and mother stood, their stiff bodies in the same position.
Getting worse. According to rescuers who found them, the family had been tortured. Missing fingers and ‘an eye taken out’. Each was executed with a bullet. And then the Hamas savages feasted on the Sabbath meal on the table.
A House of Horrors: Sam Greenhill visits Kibbutz Nir Oz to witness first-hand the carnage caused by Hamas’s deadly attack on the peaceful farming community
In one house there is a colorful children’s playhouse in the garden, surrounded by toddler toys. An Israeli flag dangles among the rubbish
Sam Greenhill, chief reporter for the Daily Mail, pictured at the site of Kibbutz Be’eri, 2.5 miles from the Gaza border, and was attacked on Saturday, October 7.
These were the last savage moments of a kibbutz family, as told by the civilian volunteers who helped recover their bodies.
I’ve heard several horrific stories here in recent days. And the fact that it is so shocking – after two weeks of brutally harrowing stories – shows how deeply this country has been traumatized by the atrocity of October 7.
Yossi Landau has 30 years of experience with Zaka, a civilian volunteer group whose members help ambulance personnel identify the victims of terrorism, traffic accidents and other disasters, and where necessary collect body parts for proper Jewish burial.
His voice trembled as he recounted the “bad dream” of how he and his comrades entered the Be’eri kibbutz after the massacre there.
Mr Landau, 55, said: ‘The first house we saw was a couple, father and mother, sitting on their knees on the floor, their heads down and their hands tied behind their backs. On the other side of the dining room sat a boy of seven and a girl of perhaps six, sitting in the same position, their hands tied behind their backs.’
Landau, who has 22 grandchildren, said the bodies showed signs of torture. “Body parts were missing – an eye had just been taken out, fingers were…” His voice trailed off. “And in the end they all had a bullet.” Tormenting himself with the horror, he began to wonder in incoherent sentences who had been tortured first and ‘whether these were the children watching the parents being tortured’ or the other way around. “And those terrorists sat there and ate the Sabbath meal prepared for the family while they tortured these children.”
Hamas thugs went from house to house searching for Israeli families during their murderous spree
Sam walks around a house where toys, clothes and furniture were strewn all over the floor
“There was a putrid smell of death in the air, full of buzzing flies, and I almost threw up,” Sam wrote about his experience (photo is one of the houses)
Daily Mail chief reporter Sam Greenhill was told how Hamas terrorists allegedly tortured their victims – including children and babies – before killing them
It’s hard to imagine a more heartbreaking scene, but Mr. Landau barely paused for breath before his next horrific memory tumbled out. ‘Then we see a woman, she was about thirty years old. She was lying on the floor, a big pool of blood, face down. We had to turn her over to put her in a body bag. She was a pregnant woman. Her stomach was cut open.
“The baby who was on the cord was stabbed and she was shot in the back. Did she see that? What was done to her baby? We do not know. We had a discussion between us about using two body bags, one for the baby and one for the mother? We decided to only use one because we didn’t want to disconnect this baby from its mother.”
It’s too terrible to think about. Is it really true? There has been no way to verify this extremely harrowing story. And it must be said that Mr. Landau is a civilian, albeit a highly experienced first responder, and not a doctor. There will be plenty of cynics who will argue that this is all Israeli propaganda. But last week I interviewed four of Israel’s leading forensic pathologists, who have the gruesome task of identifying the 297 most deformed bodies. They too told me about the worst imaginable: seeing headless babies and the remains of children who had apparently been tied up when they were murdered.
Like Mr. Landau, they said they had to separate the remains of people who had hugged each other tightly as they were burned.
Sam (pictured in front of an upside-down cot) said some of the cruelties were ‘too horrible to think about’
Hamas terrorists set fire to houses. One of the slaughtered victims was a pregnant woman whose stomach was cut open, it was claimed (photo of damage in one house)
A scorched bell is depicted among the rubble of Kibbutz Nir Oz
In his testimony, Mr. Landau, who sat with three of his colleagues, told how in a shelter near the border town of Sderot “we saw twenty people hugging themselves and trying to defend themselves.” They were all burned. We had to separate them.”
And in Kfar Aza, a village just a few kilometers from the Gaza fence, Zaka volunteers, after thinking they had collected all the bodies after ten days, found another. ‘Suddenly we see a body, fourteen or fifteen. He was outside,” Mr. Landau said. “It looks like he was running and they probably got mad at him. We found him without his head. He had no head. The evil, the horror, I don’t know why this has to happen.’
Nearby were “two piles of children,” approximately 10 to 15 years old. He raged: ‘They weren’t even shot, their hands were tied and they were all burned. Aren’t those war crimes?’
Indeed, there is compelling evidence of atrocities in all the villages I have visited in the past week.
Only the most ingrained skeptic would doubt the stories of people like Mr. Landau and his colleagues.