Remembering October 7: Rabbis Worked Tirelessly to Identify the Jews Massacred by Hamas
Kanako Mita, Sawako Utsumi, and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
October 7, 2023, remains one of the darkest days in modern Jewish history. Hamas and other Palestinian militants unleashed a barbaric pogrom in southern Israel, murdering civilians and members of the security forces in homes, communities, vehicles and at a music festival. Babies, children, women and elderly people were among those murdered. The sheer brutality of the killings shocked Israel and reverberated far beyond the region.
In a matter of hours, at least 828 civilians and 367 members of the Israeli security forces were killed. Among the victims were children and foreign nationals from numerous countries. The indiscriminate nature of the killings demonstrated that the victims’ age, nationality or vulnerability offered no protection. Hence, the human being was simply reduced to an object of hatred.
For Jewish communities, the horror did not end when the attackers were repelled. Rabbis and volunteers were confronted with the unbearable task of identifying the dead following a massacre in which bodies were sometimes severely mutilated or burned. Their work was both deeply traumatic and profoundly religious. Families were waiting desperately for confirmation of the fate of loved ones, while Jewish religious law demanded that the dead be treated with dignity and that every recoverable part of a body be returned for burial.
Voice of America reported: “Rarely do rabbis spend the Sabbath counting bodies. But Saturday, a week after Hamas militants blew easily past Israel’s fortified security fence and gunned down hundreds of Israelis — at music festivals, in their homes, in cars while trying to flee — Israel’s military rabbinate made an exception.”
Those words capture something that statistics alone cannot convey. Behind every number was a human being with a family, a history, hopes and a future that was suddenly stolen.
Former President of America, Joe Biden, pointedly described the events in stark moral terms: “You know, there are moments in this life — and I mean this literally — when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world.”
The words remain powerful because October 7 was not simply another episode in the long and tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a deliberate assault on civilians on an extraordinary scale. The massacre also reopened profound Jewish memories of persecution, vulnerability and extermination.
One of the organizations at the centre of the grim aftermath was ZAKA, a Jewish religious emergency organization whose volunteers worked to recover human remains, including blood and other bodily remains, in accordance with Jewish religious law. Their task was heartbreaking: to ensure that those murdered were afforded dignity even after their killers had sought to strip them of their humanity.
Yacoub Zechariah, the deputy mayor of Bnei Brak in 2023, told the BBC: “Physically, it’s hours upon hours without sleep – and carrying corpses is hard work… But we overcome it.”
The BBC reported, “Zechariah, a father of five, had seen bodies of children brought in with terrible injuries and burns, he said. Some had been decapitated, although it was not clear how. Some of the dead children had their hands and feet tied with phone cables.”
Such testimony is difficult to read precisely because it concerns children. The language of geopolitics can sometimes obscure the reality of what violence means. Yet behind every military operation, every political statement and every diplomatic argument are ordinary people whose lives can be destroyed within minutes.
AP News reported shortly after the massacre, before the full death toll was known: “…the horrors of the Oct. 7 Hamas assault, which killed at least 1,300 Israelis, have tapped into Israel’s deepest fears and revived memories of the Jews’ greatest trauma.”
The Economist similarly observed shortly after the attack: “Israelis know they cannot take their physical safety for granted. But nothing in the country’s 75-year history could have prepared them for the carnage of October 7th.”
The horror of October 7 must also be understood within the wider history of Islamist extremism and sectarian violence. ISIS, or Islamic State, carried out genocide against the Yazidis, enslaved women and girls, and persecuted Christians and other minorities. Shia Muslims have likewise suffered mass killings at the hands of Sunni Islamist extremists, while Alawites and Druze have endured devastating sectarian violence in Syria based on horrendous pogroms.
These communities should not be forgotten when discussing the victims of religious extremism. Shia Islam represents one of the two major branches of Islam, while Alawites possess a distinct and historically contested religious identity with connections to Shia Islam, and the Druze constitute a distinct religious tradition with historical roots in Ismaili Islam.
This wider picture is important because Islamist extremism has never been directed exclusively against Jews or Christians. It has also targeted Muslims who belong to different traditions or whom extremists regard as religiously illegitimate. The Yazidis, Christians, Shia, Alawites and Druze have all experienced the consequences of such hatred in West Asia.
Indeed, remembering these victims alongside the Jews murdered on October 7 does not diminish the particular horror of the Hamas massacre. Instead, it underlines a broader principle: religious identity must never become a justification for murder, persecution, enslavement or the destruction of communities.
October 7 was unmistakably an eruption of murderous antisemitism. Jewish civilians were targeted because they were Jews, and the massacre revived a painful historical reality: hatred of Jews did not disappear with the Holocaust. Its manifestations have changed, its political surroundings have changed, and its ideological language can change, but the capacity to dehumanize Jews remains dangerously alive.
This is why the international response matters. Condemning the massacre of October 7 does not require abandoning concern for Palestinian civilians. Nor does opposition to Hamas require hostility towards Palestinians. Indeed, Hamas’s rule and its decision to unleash such violence have brought immense suffering to both Israelis and Palestinians. Ordinary Palestinians deserve security, dignity, economic opportunity and a future free from perpetual war just as Israelis do.
The future therefore cannot be built upon the glorification of massacre. Israel needs lasting security from Hamas and other armed groups capable of repeating October 7, while Lebanon must ultimately confront the question of Hezbollah’s military power. At the same time, the political and humanitarian aspirations of ordinary Palestinians cannot simply be ignored. Security and dignity must eventually become mutually reinforcing rather than permanently opposing objectives.
There is also a wider danger beyond the Middle East. The hatred unleashed by October 7 has contributed to an atmosphere in which antisemitic rhetoric has become increasingly visible in parts of Europe and North America. Legitimate criticism of the Israeli government is entirely compatible with democratic debate. But when opposition to Israel becomes a vehicle for demonizing Jews collectively, celebrating violence against Israeli civilians, or denying Jewish people the same basic human rights demanded for others, the boundary between political criticism and antisemitism has been crossed.
At the same time, it is important not to confuse Islamist extremism with Muslims generally. Millions of Muslims reject terrorism, antisemitism and sectarian violence. Indeed, the suffering of Shia Muslims, Alawites, Druze and other communities demonstrates that Muslims themselves have frequently been victims of extremist movements claiming to act in the name of Islam. The struggle against extremism therefore cannot be reduced to a conflict between religions. It is also a struggle over whether pluralism and human dignity can survive against movements that reject both.
The lesson of October 7 is therefore painfully simple. Jewish lives cannot be valued conditionally. Palestinian lives cannot be valued conditionally either. Humanity loses when civilians become symbols rather than people.
On this day of remembrance, the world should think not only of the murdered Israelis but also of the rabbis and volunteers who worked among the dead so that families could receive answers and the victims could receive dignity. We should remember the children, the elderly, the families, the foreign nationals and all those whose lives ended in unimaginable violence.
And we should remember the Holocaust.
The Holocaust demonstrated what can happen when hatred is allowed to become normalized, when human beings are stripped of their individuality and when an entire people is portrayed as less worthy of life. October 7 was not the Holocaust, and the historical circumstances are profoundly different. Yet the hatred directed against Jews that day remains a grim reminder that the world cannot afford complacency.
October 7 should therefore remain a day of remembrance, mourning and moral clarity.
The dead deserve to be remembered as human beings.
Their families deserve to be remembered.
The victims of Islamist extremism of every faith and religious tradition deserve to be remembered.
And the world must never again become indifferent to the hatred that makes such barbarity possible.
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