A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor and a newborn just 14 hours after birth are among those identified in the October 7 Parliamentary Commission Report from the U.K., which is the most comprehensive Western analysis of the Hamas-led attack on Israel. 

The 318-page document, overseen by British historian and peer Lord Andrew Roberts, chronicles the deaths of 1,182 individuals within two days, presenting substantial evidence of civilian-targeted atrocities.

The report characterizes the attack as “a carefully crafted operation intended not only to kill but to instill terror through severe brutality, theft, and disgrace.” Testimonies highlight group assaults on women and girls, some of whom were killed, as well as instances of sexual violence against deceased bodies. It further notes that children, including those in strollers, were targeted, with some infants shot or burned.

Roberts said the attack was “not just spontaneous — it was a premeditated bloodlust.” He compared 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.

Despite the horrors, Roberts said the report also includes examples of heroism. For example, of Netta Epstein — a young man who “threw himself on a grenade to save his fiancée’s life” — Roberts said such acts “stand up with the great acts of heroism of any age.”

Released hostages Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, wearing green, are greeted by Israeli soldiers following their arrival in Israel after being held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, following their release as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel, in southern Israel, in a screen grab from a handout video obtained by Reuters on Jan. 19, 2025.  ( Israel Defense Forces/Handout via Reuters)

“We have the names in it of everybody who was killed … mostly with the circumstances of their deaths as well,” Roberts added: “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.”

Asked what role democracies should play in countering denialism, Roberts answered, “The first is properly to memorialize the victims,” he said. “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.”

Israeli soldiers remove the bodies of civilians, who were killed days earlier in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on this kibbutz near the border with Gaza, on October 10, 2023, in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

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

In the report’s 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.”