Oct. 7 survivor tells UN to ‘stop blaming us’ for war, focus on harm to Israeli kids
Sabine Taasa, whose husband and son were murdered in Hamas onslaught, describes horrors of massacre to children’s rights panel, urges it to focus on Israeli youth, not just Gazan
GENEVA, Switzerland — October 7 survivor Sabine Taasa, who lost her husband and 17-year-old son during the Hamas massacre, urged UN experts Wednesday to stop blaming Israel for the war and focus on the trauma inflicted on Israeli children.
“I need you to stop blaming us,” said Taasa, 48, whose son’s murder was filmed by his killers.
Before Hamas terrorists burst into Taasa’s home in the village of Netiv Ha’asara in southern Israel, her eldest son Or — who was on his way to the beach — called her.
The mother-of-four said he sounded terrified but urged her not to worry, and said, “Mom, I promise everything will be okay.”
He was killed just seconds later. And she would later see the video filmed by the terrorists who shot him.
“Is that normal? Shooting a child of 17 six times in the head?” Taasa asked the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva as she described the horrors of October 7.
Deeply traumatized
Around the same time, terrorists entered Taasa’s home.
Her husband Gil, 46, a firefighter, grabbed his handgun to fight back. The terrorists lobbed a grenade at him and he threw himself on top of it to protect his children.
Two of their sons were injured. The youngest, Shay, now nine, had an eye blown out of its socket, permanently blinding that eye.
Taasa’s three surviving sons are deeply traumatized, she told AFP after the hearing, describing how Shay “cannot sleep without me. He needs me 24/7.”
Just then her phone rang. She said her son calls her “every minute,” and if an hour goes by without them speaking, he tells her: “Mama, I was pretty sure that something bad happened to you. I don’t want you to die.”
Before her testimony, the child rights committee had insisted that Israel ensure children’s rights are respected not only there but also in Gaza and the West Bank.
Several of the committee’s 18 independent experts voiced deep concern about the situation of children living in Gaza, where the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 40,000 people have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
The ongoing war was sparked by the Hamas-led massacre on October 7 when terrorists killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip.
Marked for life
Taasa urged the committee to reflect on what it means to be “not just a child in Gaza, but also a child in Israel living with trauma marking them for life.”
“These children are the future of Israel, of the world. If we don’t help them now and cure them, we will not have a future.”
“We are not criminals,” she said, adding it was Hamas “who are the terrorists, the devils who kill children, women, men, the elderly.”
Taasa, who supports the government’s stated aim to destroy Hamas, told AFP she hoped her evidence would help garner “a bit of understanding” from the committee, noting that “we didn’t ask for this war.”
Her testimony came after Israel’s military announced Tuesday that it had killed eight Hamas terrorists from the Daraj-Tuffah Battalion, including Ahmed Fawzi Nasser Muhammad Wadiyya, the commander who led the invasion of Netiv Ha’asara and who was filmed drinking Coca-Cola from the fridge of the Taasa family home, moments after murdering Gil Taasa.
Waddiya flew across the border by paraglider and oversaw the massacre of 22 of the community’s 900 residents.
“I remember him. He was very ugly,” Taasa told AFP, adding that she felt “very satisfied” after hearing he had been killed.
“But not happy,” she said, adding that she would not feel happy until “we get [Hamas chief Yahya] Sinwar and kill him.”
