The October 7 massacre: what Hamas did on 7 October 2023

Saturday, 7 October 2023. The Jewish Sabbath and the festival of Simchat Torah. After a rocket barrage, Hamas-led terrorists crossed the Gaza fence into southern Israel by vehicle, motorcycle, motorised hang glider and, in some cases, boat. Hamas, which the United States and many other governments designate as a terrorist organisation, called the operation “Al-Aqsa Flood.” The Anti-Defamation League records it as the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. It puts the murdered at over 1,200, including civilians, soldiers and foreign nationals, and the hostages taken into Gaza at 251. A later British parliamentary compilation, summarised by the Jewish Virtual Library, gives 1,182 fatalities and the same 251 hostages. This was a massacre. Everything that followed, including the war that Naza: The Real Story documents, started here.

Where it happened

The terrorists struck the communities, roads and army posts of the Gaza Envelope, the town of Sderot and other sites in the western Negev. Israeli accounts name the Nova music festival near Re’im as the single deadliest civilian location, and Kibbutz Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, Route 232 and observation bases among the worst-hit places. According to the Jewish Virtual Library’s compilation of Israeli military reporting, the border was breached at 119 points and several thousand people from Gaza entered Israel, including Hamas’s Nukhba force. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups took part too. The British parliamentary compilation records 99 civilians killed at Be’eri and 62 at Kfar Aza. Thousands of rockets were fired that morning. Survivors, first responders and soldiers have described what they saw. The terrorists filmed some of it themselves.

More than three months later, Hamas issued a document claiming that the allegations of killing civilians and of rape were false, and that its men had not targeted civilians. Look at where they went: private homes, a music festival, roads full of people trying to escape. Look at the videos and the testimony. That is the evidence Israeli officials and independent investigators set against Hamas’s claim. This was not a clash between two armies at a front. It was a designated terrorist organisation and its allies breaking into civilian space.

Sexual violence

In February 2024 the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel published a study based on official sources, media reporting, interviews with first responders who reached the scenes, and other information given to the centres. The foundation that summarised it recorded the finding: rapes took place at the music festival, in communities on the Gaza border, at army posts the terrorists overran, and in Hamas captivity, and many assaults were collective, sometimes in front of partners, family or friends. In July 2025 the Dinah Project, an Israeli compilation of open-source testimony, described sexual violence at the Nova festival, the Nahal Oz army base and the kibbutzim of Nir Oz, Kfar Aza and Re’im, and said the assaults continued in captivity.

In May 2024 the Israel Defense Forces released interrogation footage in which a Hamas father and son, Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi and Abdallah Radi, described raping a woman in Kibbutz Nir Oz. The son said the woman was then killed. The IDF also released captured phrase lists in Hebrew and Arabic that included commands to undress. Hamas denies that its members committed rape. Some early volunteer accounts of the scenes were later found to be imprecise, and no single report can verify everything. None of that cancels the body of testimony, first-responder accounts and captured material that the Israeli and independent compilations set out.

The hostages

They were taken from Nova, from homes in the kibbutzim, from army posts and from the roads: children, older people, soldiers and foreign workers, Israeli citizens and nationals of other countries. Some came home in negotiated exchanges. Some were rescued by the IDF. Some were killed in captivity. Israeli compilations record that the bodies of hostages have been recovered from Gaza, including people later found to have been murdered in captivity.

The first military rescue made public was Private Ori Megidish, whom the IDF said it freed from Hamas captivity on 30 October 2023. On 12 February 2024 the IDF, the Israel Security Agency and Israel Police announced a joint operation in Rafah that rescued Fernando Simon Marman, then about 60, and Louis Har, 70, both abducted from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. Israeli accounts call that raid Operation Golden Hand. On 8 June 2024, in the Nuseirat area of central Gaza, in an operation later named Operation Arnon, the IDF, Shin Bet and police announced the rescue of Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, all taken from Nova.

Hamas said that raid killed hundreds of civilians. Israel presented it as a rescue operation against terrorists holding captives inside a densely populated area, and acknowledged that people died there. Those two claims are not equivalent, and no slogan settles them. Ask who chose to hold hostages among civilians. How the IDF tracks captives down is covered in how the IDF finds hostages.

The war that followed

Israel named the campaign Iron Swords. The Anti-Defamation League records that Israel called up on the order of 350,000 reservists and that the ground offensive into Gaza began on 27 October 2023. The government’s stated aims: destroy Hamas as a military force so it can never repeat 7 October, and bring the hostages home. Israeli officials also say the campaign allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza. The war caused civilian deaths in Gaza. Our other posts set out Israeli figures, the Hamas-run Health Ministry’s figures and how hard it is to tell terrorists from civilians, rather than collapsing it all into one number.

A democratic state fighting a designated terrorist organisation is not the same kind of actor as that organisation. The Anti-Defamation League describes Hamas as dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Israel’s war aims were to destroy Hamas’s military capacity and bring back the hostages. Keep that difference in front of you whenever someone describes this war as if it began on 8 October.

What the film shows

In Naza: The Real Story, senior IDF commanders and intelligence officers say 7 October shaped how they fought, and reservists describe being called up that morning. They describe the war as they fought it: Hamas terrorists dressed as civilians, weapons and tunnels inside civilian buildings, aid taken by Hamas, and the strict rules of engagement the IDF says it followed to protect civilians. The film was created by Roi Danino, Ariel Averbuch and Hagay Gutman.

An account of the Gaza war that starts after 7 October leaves out the reason it began. Start here. Then watch the film free, with English subtitles, and share it with someone who only knows the second half of the story.