October 7 - Al Jazeera Investigations

directed: I-Unit QA 2024 1h

Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7 transformed Middle East politics. Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit (I-Unit) conducted a forensic analysis of the events of that day, examining seven hours of footage from CCTV, surveillance cameras, personal phones and of head cameras of deceased Hamas fighters, and by compiling an exhaustive list of those killed.

On October 7, Unit I revealed that Hamas fighters and others who followed them across the Gaza fence into Israel had committed numerous human rights violations.

But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories published in the days after the attack were false. This is particularly the case with atrocities repeatedly used by Israeli and Western politicians to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the massacre of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape.

Unit I notably reveals that the Israel Defense Forces' claims that they found eight burned babies in a house on Kibbutz Be'eri were completely false. There were no babies in the house and all 12 civilians there were killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the house.

This is one of several incidents in which the police and army appear to have killed Israeli citizens.

October 7 is a deep dive into the events that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and whose significance will reverberate for decades.