Israeli organization accused of blatant October 7 disinformation and mishandling human remains

Be'eri, Israel - A new bombshell report has found evidence that a private Israeli organization involved in the collection of bodies after the October 7 attacks spread disinformation and mishandled human remains.

Israeli volunteers from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish emergency response team Zaka gather by vehicle destroyed in the October 7 attacks.
Israeli volunteers from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish emergency response team Zaka gather by vehicle destroyed in the October 7 attacks.  © JACK GUEZ / AFP

The ultra-Orthodox volunteer group Zaka has been accused of making grave errors and spreading outright lies about the victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks for its own profit, according to a Haaretz report. The Israeli Defense Forces, meanwhile, chose not to deploy many of their troops specifically trained in collection and identification of human remains.

While on the scene of the attacks, some Zaka volunteers were shooting fundraising videos and even arranging private tours for donors, using the gruesome scene as a backdrop to boost calls for money.

On top of that, many of the human remains collected by Zaka volunteers have been mishandled, with parts left behind, mislabeled, or even placed together without proper identification.

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"We received bags of theirs without documentation, and sometimes with body parts that were unrelated to one another," an Israeli officer at the Shura base told Haaretz.

"There were bags with two skulls, bags with two hands, with no way to know which was whose," one of the Shura volunteers said.

The fiasco severely slowed down efforts to document what transpired on October 7 and to return remains to families for proper burial, insiders have said.

Zaka accused of spreading disinformation about October 7 victims

Zaka volunteers search through the debris in Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the border with the Gaza Strip.
Zaka volunteers search through the debris in Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the border with the Gaza Strip.  © GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP

Zaka has also been accused of spreading blatant disinformation about October 7 in order to boost its fundraising, including the story of a pregnant Israeli woman whose fetus was allegedly stabbed.

"We saw a woman, around 30 years old, [and] she was lying on the floor in a large puddle of blood, facing the ground," a Zaka volunteer mourns in a video on the organization's social media.

"We turned her over in order to place her into the bag. She was pregnant," he adds. "Her stomach was swollen, and the baby was still attached by the umbilical cord when it was stabbed, and she was shot in the back of the head. I don't know if she suffered and saw her baby murdered or not."

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The truth is: this incident did not occur. Nobody in the kibbutz has been able to identify the woman, and a senior Zaka official admitted to Haaretz that the organization knows the story to be false.

In another video, the same Zaka volunteer cries as he describes coming across the burned and mutilated corpses of 20 Israeli children. By all accounts, this story is also untrue.

Nevertheless, these and other graphic images seem to have had their intended effect: before October 7, Zaka risked insolvency. Since then, a source told Haaretz the organization has raised more than 50 million shekels ($13.7 million).

Israel faces accusations of genocide in Gaza

A Palestinian woman holding a baby walks past ammunition containers left behind by Israeli troops as she flees Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
A Palestinian woman holding a baby walks past ammunition containers left behind by Israeli troops as she flees Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.  © Mahmud HAMS / AFP

The reporting about Zaka's disinformation and botched identification activities comes as Israel faces growing international scrutiny over its ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of over 27,000 Palestinians to date.

Last month, the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures against Israel in a landmark case brought by South Africa. The panel determined in its ruling that there was a plausible case Israel is violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Israel has doubled down on its "right to defend itself" against Hamas and continued its killing spree in Gaza unabated.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces and settlers have ramped up the violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which is not controlled by Hamas.

President Joe Biden and other top US officials have been accused of complicity in genocide as they continue to supply Israel with weapons used to kill Palestinians in Gaza en masse.

Cover photo: GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP

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