PBS News Hour | Human Rights Watch says Hamas committed war crimes on October 7 | Season 2024

STEPHANIE SY: A new report released today by Human Rights Watch concludes that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the October 7 attacks last year.

The report shows how Palestinian fighters carried out a coordinated attack – quote – “with the aim of killing civilians and taking as many hostages as possible.”

Nearly 1,200 people were killed in Israel that day, including more than 800 civilians. 251 people were taken hostage and about 120 are still being held in the Gaza Strip.

For further details, please contact Ida Sawyer.

She is crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch in Washington.

Ida, thank you for joining us on the News Hour.

As you know, numerous witness statements, videos and photographs have been made public since the attacks on October 7.

Tell me what is new about this report and why it is so important to bring all this research together in one document.

IDA SAWYER, director of Human Rights Watch’s Crisis, Conflict, and Weapons Division: So this is the first comprehensive report to examine almost every attack on a civilian facility on October 7.

As you said, much has been written about 7 October, but this report is important because it documents specific crimes, clearly identifies those responsible and shows the high degree of planning and coordination that underpinned these crimes.

We concluded that the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages were central objectives of the planned attack and that they were not actions that occurred after the fact, as part of a failed plan, or as isolated acts, such as those committed exclusively by innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

And we hope that this documentation can support accountability efforts.

It is also important for the victims and their relatives to know that their experiences are well documented and will not be forgotten.

STEPHANIE SY: This question of intention is really important, isn’t it?

When we talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity – terms that are thrown around quite loosely these days – it’s about coordination.

It is the intention.

Not every cruel act qualifies for this.

Can you talk about what evidence confirmed your belief that these were war crimes?

IDA SAWYER: What we have been able to document is that the Palestinian armed groups carried out a large-scale and systematic attack on the civilian population, in accordance with the required definition of a crime against humanity.

There is clear evidence that the organisation had a policy of committing numerous crimes against humanity.

And then we call for further investigations into other possible crimes against humanity, including the persecution of any identifiable group on racial, national, ethnic or religious grounds, rape or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity, and extermination.

STEPHANIE SY: You mentioned rape there, but does your report reach any new conclusions with regard to the sexual violence of October 7, which has obviously been a very sensitive and controversial issue since then?

IDA SAWYER: Yes, our investigations have found evidence of sexual violence, including forced nudity and the recording and sharing of sexualized images on social media without their consent.

However, we have not been able to obtain verifiable information through interviews with survivors or witnesses of the rape during the October 7 attack.

And there is supposedly only one public report from such a survivor.

However, we relied on the findings of the UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence and Conflict and her team who deployed a mission to Israel, who concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in several locations on the periphery of the Gaza Strip during the attacks. Rape and gang rape also occurred in at least three locations.

On this basis, we are convinced that sexual violence occurred. However, we do not know the full extent and cannot draw any conclusions as to whether the sexual and gender-based violence was deliberately ordered or encouraged by those who planned and ordered the attack.

STEPHANIE SY: In these interviews you also spoke to about 94 survivors of the attack.

Is there a story, Ida, that particularly sticks in your memory?

IDA SAWYER: We just heard story after story from people describing the sheer fear they felt when they realized their community was under attack.

Many hid in their safe rooms, trying to remain as quiet as possible while frantically sending text messages to loved ones and neighbors trying to understand what had happened and if they were OK. And then they described the horror they experienced later in the day when they were able to go outside and saw bodies and blood everywhere, or when they realized that a family member had been missing and presumably taken back to Gaza as a hostage.

There is a man, a nurse from Kibbutz Be’eri, where 97 civilians were killed.

And he described dragging a wounded member of a rapid response team to the kibbutz’s dental clinic to try to treat his wounds.

“There was a trail of blood,” he said.

“I can’t erase it from my memory, all that blood.”

STEPHANIE SY: Ida, there are accusations and denials on both sides of the conflict that war crimes have been committed. Israel’s military response to the October 7 terrorist attacks has now claimed over 38,000 lives, according to Gaza authorities.

What kind of accountability or justice do you ultimately hope to see for the parties on both sides of this conflict?

IDA SAWYER: So we are urging, firstly, for the urgent release of the hostages still being held and, secondly, for all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and respect international humanitarian law and for all those responsible on both sides to be held accountable for their serious crimes.

The key message we want to convey is that in no armed conflict around the world do the atrocities of one side justify the atrocities of the other.

This is called non-reciprocity and is a fundamental principle of international humanitarian law or the law of war.

Therefore, no atrocities attributable to Palestinian armed groups – such as those we documented in this report on 7 October – can justify the use of starvation as a weapon of war, collective punishment and unlawful air strikes by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

And to break this endless cycle of abuse of power in Israel and Palestine, what we are really calling for is to address the root causes and hold all those responsible for serious crimes to account.

And we believe this is in the interests of both Palestinians and Israelis.

STEPHANIE SY: Ida Sawyer from Human Rights Watch, thank you.

IDA SAWYER: Thank you.