Something both good and less good happened this week. The Sde Teiman facility scandal that was exposed, with all its implications, was genuine drama that captured most of our attention, but our eyes, which weren't really focused on a more important target even before this, are now even less focused on it – the Nukhba terrorists.
Those from whom the Sde Teiman affair and the detention facility incidents branched off – the Nazis of our generation who murdered, raped, slaughtered, beheaded, burned, and tortured women, men, elderly, and children – have not yet been brought to trial for the massacre and its atrocities.
This painful absence is, with all respect to the important Sde Teiman affair, several floors above it. We urgently need to raise our eyes there, because among all the trees, we've somewhat missed the forest. These murderers have been detained for two years without trial, and with all respect to this week's corruption affairs, we must not lower our eyes for a moment from the urgent and sacred duty to bring them to trial, and quickly.
There are various reasons, both good and bad, for this unreasonable delay, but the most significant reason no longer exists. There are no living hostages in Gaza. There is no concern that they'll be harmed as a result of this trial.
Recently, the joint bill by coalition member Simcha Rothman and opposition member Yulia Malinovsky to prosecute the massacre participants has been promoted. Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave their approval in principle, and agreements were reached at the professional level within the Justice Ministry; however, progress is moving slowly. The road is still long. We need to shorten it, both through legislation that will create appropriate conditions for the joint prosecution of hundreds of Nukhba terrorists, and through creating a broad and diverse judicial panel that will devote itself entirely to this task.
This won't be an Eichmann trial, because nothing approaches the Holocaust of six million, but it will be Eichmann-like, because there are similarities – October 7 became the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, when a terror organization carried out the most severe attack on Israel since its establishment. Survivors of the safe rooms and shelters will take the witness stand, and the heroes who saved many. The witnesses will be the essence of the trial, the credible representatives of the horror of October 2023, before memory and time blur.
Shaping a historical narrative
The Nukhba terrorists, who took care to document every minute of horror from their head cameras, will receive a fair but public trial, with maximum media exposure, according to Israel's accepted rules of evidence and criminal procedure. The preliminary legislation will need to adapt the legal event to a situation of attempted genocide. Israel will try to open the eyes of those in the world not yet poisoned, regarding the true aspirations of a broad Palestinian public that Hamas tried to realize, and also regarding Hamas itself – its essence, path, methods, and ideology.
We'll need to touch on everything there, including the horror in its details, with all the difficulty involved. We'll need to bring up witnesses and present videos, photographs, and important intelligence documents captured in the war, testifying to the overall picture – this wasn't just another mega-terror event but an enormous, meticulously planned massacre, behind which stood an orderly plan to destroy a people, to exile us from here.
The trial will address Hamas' charter seeking to exterminate us, and the "End of Days Conference" Hamas convened three years before the massacre, where ideas for "methods of action" were discussed, "after Israel ceases to exist." Among other things – "returning Palestinian refugees to their cities of origin" (Jaffa, Lod, Safed) and distinguishing between those of us allowed to leave versus those of us who will be executed. We cannot escape presenting the support for the massacre in the Palestinian Authority, both among the masses and among leaders. We'll disprove the claim that Hamas doesn't represent Palestinians. We'll present documentation, including promises from Fatah and Palestinian Authority figures to continue the work and carry out another similar event.
The trial of Nukhba terrorists must not be a one-time event belonging only to the generation in which it occurred. It must be a trial whose shelf life is many times longer. It must become part of Israel's story. It must remain so even 50 and 100 years from now. Justice must be done and seen, and must also shape a historical narrative.
The Gideon Hausner of our generation
Haim Gouri wrote about the Eichmann trial that "the many witnesses didn't come to create another accumulation of pain and rage. They gave testimony to illuminate the destruction in its details. They were the trial's essence, as they were the Holocaust's credible representatives. They were the facts."
This is how we must proceed here with the Nukhba terrorists. The survivors of the Nova festival and the Gaza border communities and Sderot must be the trial's essence, the credible representatives of the horror, before memory and time blur. Survivors of the safe rooms that were nearly burned with people alive will take the witness stand, and shelter survivors, and Nova survivors who witnessed the rapes, and heroic civilians who saved many. WhatsApp exchanges and videos will be presented of those besieged in their homes who desperately called for help that didn't arrive.
The Gideon Hausner of our generation, whom we hope will be found, will speak before the glass booths of 2025 on behalf of all of us – the dead and the living in whom something died – just as Hausner, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, spoke before the glass booth in 1962.
But none of this is happening, meanwhile, because two years after the massacre, not even one indictment has been filed against any of the murderers captured alive. The official explanation – evidentiary difficulties – is no longer acceptable. Behind the scenes and far from the public eye, an enormous scope of work has been done – collecting, interrogating, taking testimonies, analyzing materials, investigating, and studying every single event.
Now we need to work with what we have and what we don't have. We need to present to the world the story of the horror and massacre in its details, and what's behind it – Hamas' orderly plan to destroy us. We need to embark on this agonizing and so necessary path, because justice has not only not been seen until now – it hasn't been done at all. This trial is a human, moral, and Jewish obligation toward ourselves and the world, and certainly toward the bereaved families and the families of the wounded and hostages.
Don't count on the halt of massacre denial in the world, or on the disappearance of the Erdogans and Maduro types and the "from the river to the sea" people. Holocaust deniers still exist today. We'll also deal with massacre deniers. The trial is intended first and foremost for us, and for very many in the world who still seek to eliminate absolute evil.
