Two years ago today, Hamas militants launched a series of planned, armed incursions into Israel, where they murdered 1,195 civilians, injured hundreds more, and took 250 people hostage. Some 48 of them are still held captive – their unimaginable ordeal still not over. They were – and still are – held in life-threatening conditions.
People including babies and entire families were put to death, often in barbaric fashion – all without provocation, all without justification. Young people attending the Nova music festival were killed. The slaughter was indiscriminate. A particular feature of the atrocities was the use of degrading sexual violence: dozens of cases of rape and sexual assault were reported. The Israeli authorities released harrowing videos of these incidents to selected audiences so that there could be no doubt about their nature and reality.
