On the seventh day of the war in Gaza, the shocking testimonies from the burned kibbutzim begin to come out. ZAKA personnel, who spend night and day collecting the many bodies, describe horrific descriptions that have never been heard of and never caught in the human mind.
Testimonies from the horror: Residents of the Gaza envelope recount the moments of terror // Photo: Yoni Rikner
Moti Bukchin, ZAKA spokesman who is on the ground, describes to Israel Hayom what he has been going through in the days since the outbreak of the "Iron Swords" war: "The horrifying scenes we encountered in the kibbutzim are sights that have never been seen before. Children, babies, in bed, in the stroller, shot and burned. Tie people to a chair with their hands behind their backs or tie them to each other while they were on the floor, then set the building they were in alive. Each arena is more difficult than the other. Each house is more horrifying than the other. There were also young men in the area of the party who exploded from the terrorists' fragmentation grenades. We found many young people shot in the trenches.
"We don't talk much about what we see, we keep quiet, we don't share with each other. Where a volunteer feels he can't anymore, I tell them to wait outside. There are those who crash while working, collapse and go home."
Mandy Habib, ZAKA Commander,
"At the moment we are not thinking about the soul, we continue to work with all our might. We are in a race against time. The condition of the bodies is getting worse by the day. It's very hot here, the bodies are rotting and the collection work is getting harder by the day. In the Meron disaster there were 45 fatalities, we thought it wouldn't get worse. So for the first time we transported bodies by truck, what we have here is worse than the Holocaust. The smell of death everywhere."
Yossi Lando Senior Volunteer ZAKA,
Yossi Lando, a senior volunteer in the organization, also shares during dramatic collection work from Bari: "We saw children hugging their mother, shot. We saw parents and children in the same room, facing each other. Their hands are tied behind their backs. When according to signs they were severely abused. A family of five, together with the dog burned inside the dimension, threw a grenade into the dimension and made sure they burned alive."
"They dressed civilians with explosive belts so that the security forces that reached these bodies would explode. I saw 20 children handcuffed from behind.
They put them in two groups 10 and 10, shot them and burned them inside the dining room."
Mendi Habib, commander of ZAKA, who is also involved in holy work, shares: "Already on the access roads to the kibbutzim, even before we went inside, we saw entire families burned in vehicles. Women. Children. People are shooting vehicles. Bloody carts and baskets are strewn outside the vehicles. Young girls who ran away from the party barefoot, with bullets pierced in their heads."
"Inside the kibbutz it was already more horrifying. We saw a burnt child on the side of a house. Inside a house on the edge of Kibbutz Be'eri, a couple sat tied together, shot and burned. In front of them are three burned and shot children. There was a little boy of four or five among them."
The extent of the destruction in the envelope is exposed to the world, Photo: AFP
Did you meet ISIS's death scene there?
"Much worse! I saw bodies shot in all sorts of positions. I go through bodies on the kibbutz paths. Maneuvering between bodies strewn everywhere. We saw iron lodged in a skull. A kind of axe stuck in the head, unimaginable horrors. I share with you after crying so much. After sharing endlessly. These monsters are worse than ISIS. The prime minister called their massacres 'barbaric'. 'Barbarians' is a compliment to them. Nazis are a compliment to them. Cannibals are a compliment to them."
Moti Bukchin, ZAKA spokesman, photo: ZAKA
"We also saw blood scattered on the ceiling. On the floor. I've been at ZAKA for 25 years. Such a horror as we saw in these four days we didn't see cumulatively in all the disasters and terror attacks we covered. No such sights have ever been seen. I saw dogs crying tears, frightened, shaking. Today we took a dog out of the home of one of the families. One of the friends of the person who was murdered and slaughtered in the house recognized her friend's dog, she contacted me and today we managed to return the dog to her."
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