David Bernstein | 7.17.2024 12:24 PM

Note from DB: I was going to post something about my visit to the South during the lawprof fact-finding mission I attended, by my colleague Adam Mossoff posted an incredibly thoughtful and well-written account of that day on Facebook that sums up what I wanted to say and more. With his permission, it's reprinted below. If want to see the original public post on Facebook with the devastating accompanying photos, click this link.

Day 2 (July 10) of the law professor mission to Israel was incredibly difficult, as we went south to the Gaza Envelope to visit the sites of the October 7 massacres and atrocities: Kibbutz Nir Oz, the Nova festival grounds, the IDF base Nahal Oz, and the car cemetery at Tekuma. We had guides or speakers at each place, and the stories and information they conveyed made the destruction and death of that day that much more real. It is impossible to convey fully in words or pictures the full sense of destruction of homes and cars—the burned-out husks of homes, the bullet holes, the utterly destroyed vehicles. The stories of sadism committed by the Hamas soldiers and even civilian Palestinians who killed Jews with nihilistic glee – babies, children, adults of every age from 18 years old to the elderly. It was psychologically devastating and emotionally draining to see and hear of pure, unadulterated evil. The only thing worse was the 45-minute film of GoPro videos by the Hamas soldiers we watched the following morning.

As I mentioned in my first post on the first day, the World Jewish Congress did another incredible job with the logistics, including bookending this difficult day with two positive events. First, we began the day early with a stop in Ashkelon, a city of 200,000 people that is only 8 miles from Gaza. It has borne the brunt of the rocket attacks by Hamas for many, many years, and its hospital has been hit many times. But we were in Ashkelon on Wednesday morning to visit the School for the Gifted that was founded and run by Elina Lustov and to learn about the Atlas Juniors program run by Elina and Boaz Arad. The Atlas Junior program provides teenagers the specific knowledge and skills to succeed in high-tech and biotech careers, such as at startups, large companies, or as entrepreneurs themselves. We learned about their studies and the students each did short presentations on their internships at companies and the cutting-edge tech or biotech projects they worked on. It was an inspiring vision of the virtues of Israeli society that promotes education and the application of science and technology in a civil society through commercial development and the free market. The students in the Atlas Juniors are all from Ashkelon or from surrounding communities and kibbutzim that were attacked on October 7, and so we also spoke with them a bit about this. These teenagers are all still deeply affected by that horrible day, but their focus on the future, their intelligence, and their aspirations are both palpable and inspirational.

It was then on to the Gaza Envelope – the area of Israel that is within 4.3 miles (7 km) of the border of Gaza – and one of the most difficult 12-hour days I have ever had in my life.

Our first stop was at the car cemetery near Tekuma. This was not originally intended to become a memorial, as it was setup by the IDF in the days following October 7 for the purpose of collecting the literal ashes and other small body parts from cars that were either burned down to their metal frames or riddled with bullets – or oftentimes both. There are 1,650 cars at the car cemetery. We listened to a presentation by IDF Captain Adam Ittah, who explained what happened on October 7 and gave us the backstories to some of the vehicles, such as an ambulance from the Nova festival that is utterly destroyed – it's nothing but a fire-scarred metal frame riddle with bullet holes (see picture below). During the October 7 attack at the Nova festival, many people, many of whom already wounded, had taken refuge in this ambulance. Hamas soldiers attacked the ambulance (a war crime), riddling it with bullets, throwing hand grenades inside, and then shooting it with an RPG to set it on fire. Ultimately, there was nothing left inside but ashes, from which scientists identified 18 different people. Captain Ittah explained how everything that Hamas soldiers did that day was planned in advance. They brough zip ties for raping and taking hostages, and they brought accelerants with them to set fire to cars and houses so that the fires burned hotter and more intensely. Why bring accelerants?

Their purpose was to reduce their victims to........

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