Israeli emergency workers who responded in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on the Jewish state encountered some of the most horrific of first-hand views of the massacre.
At terror sites, workers and paramedics from Israel’s emergency response agency ZAKA, which operates in Israel and internationally, perform search-and-rescue tasks, handle bodies, body parts, and spilled blood following Jewish religious law. Many of its workers are Orthodox Jews.
Two ZAKA workers, named Yaakov and David, witnessed the worst-hit sites in the attacks, including the Be‘eri kibbutz and the scene of the nature party rave near the Re’im kibbutz, and shared detailed accounts with The Epoch Times staff in Israel on Oct. 12.
Yaakov said that on Oct. 7, his group began their task in Netivot, Israel, a town not far from the kibbutzes along the Gaza border, which bore the brunt of the attack. They drove toward the frontier to a crossroads and headed south for several kibbutzes.
“The kibbutzim were still closed in this area since they were still barricaded inside,” he said.
“[The terrorists] set some vehicles on fire,” Yaakov said. “Some vehicles were overturned. The terrorists simply massacred them all along the road from the Sha'ar HaNegev intersection to the kibbutz.
“There were dozens of bodies scattered around. Some of them tried to escape with the cars, but those who didn’t succeed, the terrorists just shot them in the car.
“Some of the vehicles caught fire. The terrorists also fired RPG missiles. [If they] hit a fuel tank of one of the vehicles ... it just burned the ... occupants.
“It was the first night of our activity there. The next day, we gradually entered Kibbutz Be'eri after the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] cleared the area of terrorists.
“We entered the place; we began to search house by house, and then, it was the time we were simply [appalled] by the scenes.
“It was actually on the first night as well, in the nature party near Kibbutz Re'im; they just pierced dozens of people with bullets. I took care of a body that I counted no less than 50 bullets that pierced it.”
He was asked what the rave site looked like when he arrived.
“I'll tell you this,” Yaakov said. “I work in a poultry slaughterhouse. Sometimes, there are chickens that have a disease, and it is forbidden to take them out; and therefore, they kill them all so that there are no infections.
“It looked like a duck range, just piles of discarded bodies, in the worst conditions, thrown and scattered, just like ...”
His voice trailed off before he finished the sentence.
“As much as we were prepared for this, we were already told the night before to be careful, that we are entering a very difficult territory,” Yaakov said. “We were not ready for this. And I’ve been in ZAKA for 32 years, I’ve seen the worst sights.
“I remember the attack on [bus] Line 32 in Jerusalem in 2002.”
‘It’s Hard ... to Perceive What I Saw’
The Line 32 bomb used ball bearings as shrapnel to maximize casualties; the Hamas bombing killed 19 people and wounded 74.“I was there, and the prime minister of Israel at the time was Ariel Sharon, who was a person who saw a thing or two in his life,” Yaadov said.
“He asked us: ‘How do you manage to see such things?’ And I say now that as much as I’ve seen in my life, nothing prepared me for what I saw in the last few days.
“I called the terrorists ‘barbaric animals’ next to someone, and then he said to me, ’Why do you hurt animals? Why do you hurt animals?! Animals hunt for food, not for sadism!’
“To enter Kibbutz Be'eri, and to see that they simply took a family, children, parents, children from the age of zero and massacred them in the name of hatred.
“It’s hard for a human being to perceive what I saw. People are tied to their beds, and their bodies are burned. My friends on the team saw beheaded bodies, and they told me that they took a pair of parents, tied them to the fence, and in front of their eyes, they shot the children and then killed the parents.
“It’s not just to kill. It’s to make the parents suffer by letting them see how they kill the children—crazy things. You don’t know where this crazy mind came from, what kind of crazy mind thinks of such sadism.
“A woman that ran away from the house and hid under the terrace of the house. The terrorist chased her, shot her in the head—eight bullets—killing her. You killed her with the first bullet to the head, why do you shoot eight bullets?”
“I was in Kibbutz Kfar Aza yesterday. I took care of [a] family: two parents, a daughter who was a soldier, and two boys. Someone told me later that they were in a basketball club.
“They were in the security room, and the terrorists managed to break into the security room, the family members embraced each other, and the terrorists sprayed them with hundreds of bullets, hundreds of bullets! Just a whole family, they were found hugging, just a whole family, hugging together. They sprayed them together.”
Yaakov then spoke about Be'eri, where more than 100 people were slain.
“There was a paramedic who came for treatment [at the dental clinic there],” he said. “She went in and then hid in one of those lockers. I just don’t want to give a lot of identifying details because of her family. The terrorists pierced her, just pierced her [with multiple bullets].”
Yaakov struggled for words as he discussed how difficult it was to witness such atrocities.
He’s worked in ZAKA his whole career, he said.
“It was always hard for me to see bodies, especially children,” Yaakov said. “And here you saw so many children, not just in one place, but you enter the houses—here, there are two children. And here, there are three children. And here, there are five children.
“And it brings your life to an end, it brings your life to an end because you can’t talk about it with anyone. You can’t share it with any human being because anyone will be traumatized by it. Their soul will be hurt by it.
“But I went into the houses. I tell you, in the dining room of the kibbutz, how the terrorists slaughtered the people, I don’t know.”
He took deep breaths as he spoke.
“It’s hard, very hard,” Yaakov said.
David talked about what he had seen.
“We reached the police station of Sderot city, and we saw there many dead terrorists. May there be more like them,” he said. “We found a policeman who apparently hid under the stairs and was burned there. We managed to get him out.
“And then from there, I drove towards road 232. All along the road, cars on the sides of the roads were shot and burned. And we removed two or three bodies from each car.
“We packed up corpses, some of them completely burned, some of them shot in a shocking way. The terrorists didn’t just shoot. They made dead checking, that is, after they killed them, they came closer to the bodies and shot another bullet in the head, a bullet in the eye, and all kinds of things.
“It was like this all along the road. We collected, I think, several dozen bodies.”
David described his ZAKA unit’s working technique.
They divided into two or three teams and removed bodies from each car, he said. They would load them into a ZAKA vehicle that would transfer them to a refrigerated truck, then return for more bodies.
“We walked like this all along the road toward Kibbutz Re‘im, toward Kibbutz Be’eri,” David said. “All along the way, we found people who probably fled the nature party on foot, shot on the side of the road.
“The terrorists made sure to make a dead check for everyone. I mean, it wasn’t enough for them to just kill. They burned, shot ...
“We got to some vehicles where there were two bodies. We collected them, and suddenly, we saw a body inside completely burned. Burned to ... coals when you finish making a barbecue. We took the body out.
“Not all the [ZAKA] staff, you know, managed to withstand the horrors. Some of them were standing aside, crying. Moving on, continuing, there was no time to stop because you want to get as much done as possible.
‘In Every House ... Different Horrors’
“After that, we got to Kibbutz Be'eri, and there, the horror was revealed to a full extent,” David said.“It went like this: the unit that is responsible for defusing the bombs comes into the houses of the kibbutz, and then the soldiers who make sure that it is all clear, and then we enter.
“I went into the bathroom and I saw four bodies on top of each other: father, mother, son and daughter, and their dog above them. Everyone is shot, you know. Penetrating shots.”
David was asked if he thought they had been hiding or if the bodies had been placed on top of each other.
“I don’t know whether they were hiding, but I’m telling you, I came to the apartment. In the shower—one on top of the other: father, mother, son and daughter, and the dog.
“From above, all shot. That’s one apartment. Other apartments were completely burned—bodies completely burned with the house. You know, in every house, you see different horrors.
“We came into a house where we saw two people just tied to each other, and they were half-burned; both shot and burned.
“You know, everybody there didn’t die in a natural way, as they say, this ... everyone went through their own abuse.
“I‘ll give you another example. Suddenly, the commander told me: ’Look, there’s one here. Go look, there’s a body behind the terrace.’
“We come, and we see an elderly woman who probably ran away, with a huge hole in her eye. From point-blank range, she was shot in the eye, from side to side. It was all sorts of things you are not used to seeing on normal days.”
David was asked about the reported beheadings.
‘I Became Like a Robot’
David said he saw every imaginable atrocity—“a catastrophe.” Entering houses closest to the border fence, he found multiple bodies in each one.“They just entered and eliminated them one by one in the most shocking way that is possible,” he said. “Without any mercy, without nothing. It doesn’t seem that they have considered anything. Mutilated bodies ... you know, everything.
“I saw a couple that it looked that at point blank range they got a few bullets, they were eliminated.
“Those who didn’t open the door—the terrorists burned the house with the people inside, do you understand? Or people that were hiding in a security room and they didn’t want to open it, so the terrorists burned it.
“They looted everything. They behaved in the most barbaric way that is possible. And we did the work, all under fire, under pressure to do more and more, before dark.”
Yaakov said, “We pray for the captives. Who knows what are the terrorists doing to them there? Who knows what is done to them?”
He also spoke about the toll on workers such as himself.
“I’m 32 years in ZAKA, and I’ve already encountered thousands of cases,” Yaakov said. “When I collect the bodies, I become like a robot in some sense. You can ask me later what the body looked like, and I don’t know what to tell you.
‘We Have an Important Task’
David discussed how he coped, in the wake of the bloody attacks, with the seemingly endless number of corpses.He said it helped to know that he was fulfilling the obligation to bring bodies for burial following Jewish law and also giving closure to families who wouldn’t have to go through the uncertainty of wondering if their loved one was held captive.
“Look, it’s not easy, but we know we have an important task: to bring everyone to burial,” David said.
“Another story from yesterday [Oct. 11] when we arrived in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. The majority of the terrorists were already dead, most of the bodies of the kibbutz members had been collected, and then one of the commanders came and said: ‘Look, I think there is a body here. I don’t know if it is a terrorist or a Jew.’
“We arrived, and it was the body of a terrorist. Then, some other soldier came, telling me, ‘Look, we have a burned body here, I don’t know ... maybe you can see what ...’
“We came to the place. You see in front of the house four burned bodies of terrorists, at a distance of about 10 meters from a burned body. We were able to identify by the gun magazines that the man fought with the terrorists, and they just burned him. I don’t want to tell you what was left of him, yes?
“But at least we managed to bring another body to burial, and that’s our goal. What’s happening to us ... we'll think about it next week. We’re currently on our mission. We don’t even have time to think about it.
“But it’s not a pleasant sight at all; I'd even say a very difficult sight. And thanks to our righteous women, we manage to cope, receive support from home, and that ... but definitely very difficult sights.
“I'll tell you what, this masses of more corpses and more corpses and more corpses and more corpses ...
“It’s, you know, it’s not easy, not easy at all, but ... with God’s help, we will have the strength to do the work in the best way, and with God’s help, we will be good messengers. We are happy with every corpse that we manage to bring to burial, that another family knows that a member of their family has come to burial and is not missing in Gaza or that they don’t know what is going on with them.
“There are many who don’t know what’s going on with them, you understand, so we try to make every effort, scan again and scan again and scan again, so maybe we'll be able to find another corpse.
“And with God’s help, we will manage to move on to happy places and not to such terrible places.”
