During one of my several trips to Israel, I visited Sderot, thanks to an Israeli friend who loved showing his country to non-Israelis. The town has about 30,000 people, and the Gaza Strip, from which Israel withdrew in 2005 but has since blockaded, lies a mile or so away.
After Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, a horrifying video of Sderot emerged. Gunmen from Hamas, more specifically its military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, roamed its streets in pickup trucks and on foot. They had a common purpose of shooting anyone they encountered: pedestrians, people at a bus stop, motorists and motorcyclists.
Bodies in pools of blood lay about. Cars were pockmarked with bullet holes or crumpled after crashing into barriers once their drivers were shot. The gunmen killed 32 people; 20 were civilians.
The only word to describe what Hamas did in Sderot is “atrocity”. In all, Hamas deliberately killed at least 900 Israelis, mainly civilians, that day in various parts of their country.
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