The U.K.’s Parliamentary Commission Report on the October 7 attack, the most comprehensive Western investigation to date into the Hamas-led assault on Israel, identifies victims including a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who was murdered and a baby killed just 14 hours after birth.

The report, led by British historian Lord Andrew Roberts, details the deaths of 1,182 individuals over a 48-hour period and presents substantial evidence of atrocities against civilians.

It characterizes the attack as “a meticulously planned operation designed not only to kill but to terrorize through , looting and humiliation,” citing accounts of gang rapes of women and girls, some of whom were murdered, and evidence of sexual violence against corpses. It also highlights the targeting of children, including infants shot in strollers or burned alive.

Lord Roberts recounted being deeply moved by meeting Mandy Damari, the mother of , during a visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where he spoke with families of victims who were still awaiting news of their loved ones. In an interview with Digital, Roberts remembered the uncertainty surrounding the fate of Damari’s 27-year-old daughter, Emily.

He explained, “At that time, of course, she didn’t know whether her 27-year-old daughter, Emily, was going to be released or not, or whether she was going to die in Gaza,” adding, “And I have a 25-year-old daughter, and so it was brought home incredibly powerfully to me.”

Despite the disturbing nature of the evidence, Roberts stressed that the report focused solely on verified facts. “We actually made the report much less than it could have been, because we insisted on only putting things in that could be double-checked,” he stated. “If we had put in things that we truly believe happened but couldn’t prove happened, we kept them out.”

Roberts explained that his motivation for undertaking the project was “the denialism that has already cropped up,” including attempts to minimize or deny the events of October 7. He commented, “It’s quite ironic that as well as celebrating and indulging in their most sort of disgusting fantasies by wearing GoPro cameras, they also seek to deny that the whole thing ever happened.”

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The report identifies “October 7 denial” as a phenomenon that emerged almost immediately after the attacks, echoing historical patterns of denial following atrocities, despite the .

“I thought it was really important to get a big, thick, well-documented, irrefutable, fully footnoted document out there that will stand the test of time,” Roberts said.

The report details mass looting, arson, and mutilation. It notes that terrorists used victims’ phones to send images to their families, booby-trapped corpses with grenades, and dragged bodies through Gaza. It confirms that “acts of sexual violence” occurred “across all sites” during the attack and mentions forensic evidence of partially or fully naked bodies.

Roberts described the attack as “not just spontaneous — it was a premeditated bloodlust,” comparing it to historical atrocities like the Rape of Nanjing in 1937. “Once Hamas got into a bloodlust, they were going out of their way to murder and kill absolutely anybody who came anywhere near them,” he said.

Amidst the horrors, Roberts highlighted acts of heroism, such as Netta Epstein, a young man who “threw himself on a grenade to save his fiancée’s life.” Roberts stated that such acts “stand up with the great acts of heroism of any age.”

“We have the names in it of everybody who was killed … mostly with the circumstances of their deaths as well,” Roberts added, reflecting, “Speaking as a historian, there are moments when one thinks of 9/11, or Pearl Harbor, various other attacks like this. They become part of history very quickly, but the actual individuals involved tend to get forgotten.”

When asked about the role of democracies in combating denialism, Roberts replied, “The first is properly to memorialize the victims,” and “The second … is to see this appalling act of barbarism for what it is, which is a complete denial of democracy, a blow struck deliberately against civilization, and … the most appalling act of racism.”

Roberts clarified that he was expressing a personal view when he stated, “Britain should be doing everything in its power to help Israel protect itself forever against such another attack,” adding, “At the moment, it seems [the British government] is not doing that at all.”

In their conclusion, Roberts and his colleagues wrote: “Our report will hopefully permit people to see such denials and justifications for what they really are: a perversion of and rejection of human decency. We owe it to the victims and their grieving families to set down the ghastly unvarnished truth about the sheer barbarism that Hamas and its terrorist allies unleashed on October 7, 2023.”