by Douglas Murray, Daily Mail
The sheer scale of the atrocities carried out by Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, is all too often and all too easily passed over in the rest of the world, shrugged aside as if more than a thousand unbelievably violent deaths were of little or no consequence.
But consider this. Israel is a country of just 9million people, America one of some 333million.
The death toll that day was the equivalent of some 44,400 Americans killed by terrorism. Or more than a dozen 9/11s. It would be the equivalent of some 8,400 British people being slaughtered and another 1,750 taken hostage.
These figures are almost too much for anyone in the West to comprehend. They were for the people of Israel too. But it happened to them anyway.
The attack from Gaza was brigade-sized, the terrorists forcing their way into Israel at 60 different points, not just by land vehicles and on foot but by boat and on hang gliders; perhaps as many as 6,000 in total.
Wherever they arrived they brought death – with rifles, grenades, incendiary weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and more.
There were several waves, with terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad coming first, then citizens of Gaza intent on joining in the looting and killing.
It would take months to identify the number of people killed that day. The final body count turned out to be just short of 1,200 people.
The victims were mainly civilians. At the Nova dance party just a couple of miles from the Gaza border, 364 young people were slaughtered as they hid or tried to flee.
Many of them called their families – asking for help, asking for advice, or just telling their parents that they loved them – before they were mercilessly cut down.
In the age of the videophone the scale and brutality of what was happening swiftly became clear across the country and then the world.
In the coming months I would see many such videos, from relatives who showed me the last moments in the lives of their loved ones, recorded and sent just before the terrorists struck.
Many of the terrorists were also recording what was happening on their own cameras and mobile phones, filming the atrocities as they were carrying them out and then broadcasting their acts of violence with pride.
These acts included burning people alive and raping men and women. Sometimes before killing them. Sometimes after.
In a video compilation of just some of the killings that day, the murders and bodies seem to go on endlessly.