A Holocaust survivor murdered at age 91 and a baby killed just 14 hours after birth are among the victims named in the U.K.’s October 7 Parliamentary Commission Report. This report represents the most detailed Western investigation to date into the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
The 318-page report, chaired by British historian and peer Lord Andrew Roberts, meticulously documents the deaths of 1,182 individuals within a 48-hour timeframe and provides extensive evidence of atrocities committed against civilians.
The report characterizes the assault as “a meticulously planned operation designed not only to kill but to terrorize through extreme brutality, looting and humiliation.” It includes testimonies of group rapes of women and girls, some of whom were murdered, as well as evidence of sexual violence committed against corpses. Additionally, it details the targeting of children, including infants shot in strollers or burned alive.
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Lord Roberts, a prominent historian and member of the House of Lords, expressed that meeting Mandy Damari, the mother of hostage Emily Damari, “reduced me to tears.” In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lord Roberts recounted his visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where he listened to families of victims while the fate of their loved ones remained uncertain.
He stated, “At that time, of course, she didn’t know whether her 27-year-old daughter, Emily, was going to be released or not, or whether she was going to die in Gaza.” This personal connection resonated deeply with Roberts, who has a 25-year-old daughter.
Despite the graphic nature of the material, Roberts emphasized that the report was strictly limited to verified facts. “We actually made the report much less than it could have been, because we insisted on only including information that could be double-checked,” he noted. “If we had included things that we truly believe happened but couldn’t prove, we kept them out.”
When asked about his motivation for undertaking this project, Roberts cited “the denialism that has already cropped up,” including attempts to downplay or question the events of October 7. He remarked, “It’s quite ironic that as well as celebrating and indulging in their most sort of disgusting fantasies by wearing GoPro cameras, they also seek to deny that the whole thing ever happened,” referring to Hamas.
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“October 7 denial,” as the report refers to it, emerged almost immediately after the attacks and mirrors historical patterns of atrocity denial, despite the overwhelming evidence.
Roberts asserted, “I thought it was really important to get a big, thick, well-documented, irrefutable, fully footnoted document out there that will stand the test of time.”
The report includes accounts of mass looting, arson, and mutilation. It states that terrorists used victims’ phones to send images to their families, booby-trapped corpses with grenades, and dragged bodies through Gaza. Furthermore, it confirms that “acts of sexual violence” occurred “across all sites” during the attack, referencing forensic findings of partially or fully naked bodies.
Roberts described the attack as “not just spontaneous — it was a premeditated bloodlust,” comparing it to historical atrocities like the Rape of Nanjing in 1937. “Once Hamas got into a bloodlust, they were going out of their way to murder and kill absolutely anybody who came anywhere near them,” he said.
In spite of the horrors, Roberts noted that the report also includes instances of heroism, such as that of Netta Epstein — a young man who “threw himself on a grenade to save his fiancée’s life.” Roberts remarked that such acts “stand up with the great acts of heroism of any age.”
Roberts also highlighted, “We have the names of everyone who was killed, mostly detailing the circumstances of their deaths as well.” He added, “Speaking as a historian, there are moments when one thinks of 9/11, or Pearl Harbor, various other attacks like this. They become part of history very quickly, but the actual individuals involved tend to get forgotten.”
When asked about the role democracies should play in combating denialism, Roberts emphasized, “The first is properly to memorialize the victims. The second… is to see this appalling act of barbarism for what it is, which is a complete denial of democracy, a blow struck deliberately against civilization, and… the most appalling act of racism.”
Roberts concluded, “Britain should be doing everything in its power to help Israel protect itself forever against such another attack,” noting that this was his personal view: “At the moment, it seems [the British government] is not doing that at all.”
In the report’s conclusion, Roberts and his colleagues wrote: “Our report will hopefully permit people to see such denials and justifications for what they really are: a perversion and rejection of human decency. We owe it to the victims and their grieving families to set down the ghastly unvarnished truth about the sheer barbarism that Hamas and its terrorist allies unleashed on October 7, 2023.”
