Amnesty International on Thursday accused Hamas and some smaller armed Palestinian groups of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and in their treatment of hostages seized that day and taken to Gaza.
In a 171-page report released more than two years after the attack, which set off the war in Gaza, the international human rights organization documented many individual cases of the atrocities committed that day.
It concluded that the Palestinian armed groups, and to a lesser extent some unaffiliated citizens, had perpetrated inhumane acts in a “systematic attack directed against a civilian population,” including murder,imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence.
Many aspects of the Hamas-led assault had already been widely documented by the United Nations and other international and local human rights organizations, and in investigations by the news media, including The New York Times.
About 1,200 people were killed during the attack, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli authorities, making it the deadliest day in the country’s modern history. About 250 others were abducted to Gaza.
The Amnesty report strongly rebuts claims by Hamas that its fighters had directed their attack against military targets, finding that “the overwhelming majority of those killed were civilians and most of the locations targeted were residential communities or other places in which civilians were gathered, namely two music festivals and a beach.”
The report added, “Heavily armed fighters carrying assault rifles, machine guns, grenades and rocket-propelled grenades carried out systematic and deliberate attacks targeting civilians.”
Amnesty said it had also documented evidence that some of those captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — soldiers and civilians — had been subjected to physical and sexual violence, either in Israel or Gaza, though the group said it had been unable to reach any conclusions on the scope and scale of the sexual violence, or, for the most part, to determine the affiliation, if any, of the perpetrators.
Hamas on Thursday rejected the report, describing it in a statement as “flawed and unprofessional.” The group accused Amnesty International of adopting the Israeli government’s narrative and continued to blame Israeli forces for the killing of civilians during the October assault.
In addition, Hamas accused Amnesty International of repeating the Israeli government’s “lies and allegations regarding rape, sexual violence and the mistreatment of prisoners.”
The report comes a year after Amnesty International became the first major international rights organization to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza, where about 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, according to local officials.
“Israel’s unlawful conduct throughout its military offensive resulted in unprecedented harm to Palestinians in Gaza that resulted in the massive scale of killings and serious injuries over an extremely short time,” the organization said at the time.
That contention, outlined in a 296-page report, drew a strong rebuke from Israel, which has denied charges of genocide. The Israel chapter of Amnesty International also took issue with those findings, saying that a majority of its local members considered the genocide claim to be “not sufficiently substantiated.”
In the Thursday report, Amnesty placed the Hamas-led attack on Israel within the context of the longstanding armed conflict between Palestinian armed groups and Israel. It said the assault had taken place against the backdrop of Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territories and “widespread human rights violations perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians.”
It added in the report’s introduction that, in the wake of the 2023 attack, “Israel embarked on a military offensive on Gaza unprecedented in magnitude, scale and duration.”
The report comes about 10 months after the majority of living hostages in Gaza were returned to Israel in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. A tenuous cease-fire came into force in the enclave on Oct. 10 this year, and the remaining 20 living hostages were released days later.
Amnesty International said it had faced significant challenges in the investigation, including the refusal of the Israeli authorities to cooperate with requests for information, the reluctance of many survivors and witnesses to speak to Amnesty researchers, and the limited forensic evidence collected by Israeli officials.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the publication of the report for, among other things, being tardy.
“It took Amnesty International more than two years of silence to begin addressing Hamas’s heinous crimes, and even now its report falls far short of reflecting the full scope of Hamas’s horrific atrocities,” the ministry said in a statement.
Describing the rights group as “biased,” the statement added, “Fortunately, the world does not need Amnesty International to recognize the truth of the sheer monstrosity of Hamas.”
Amnesty International said it was publishing the report now “because, more than two years later, victims of the attacks are still waiting for true justice and accountability.” It added, “Neither Hamas’s political nor military leadership have publicly recognized or condemned the crimes committed.”
The rights group added that it had “repeatedly and unequivocally condemned the violations and atrocity crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups in Israel on and since October 7, 2023.” It said the Thursday report had built on that work “to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the evidence collected, as well as legal analysis of the crimes committed.”
Amnesty said it had gathered evidence from hundreds of videos and testimonies collected by the group and other investigators, and had conducted interviews with 70 people, including survivors, forensic experts, medical professionals and therapists.
It said it had found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups gave orders for acts of sexual violence during the attacks.
Amnesty said it had spoken to one person who chose to remain anonymous but confirmed testimony he had given to the news media about being pinned down by armed men, stripped and raped at the site of the Nova music festival. The rights group said it had also spoken to the man’s lawyer and had viewed his medical records.
The rights group also concluded that members of Hamas or its military wing had committed physical and sexual violence against hostages in captivity. It also said they had subjected civilian hostages, as well as captured soldiers, to inhuman conditions, including denial of adequate food and medical care, during their imprisonment.
Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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