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By Andrew Tobin
(NOVEMBER 14 2023/WASHINGTON FREE BEACON) EILAT, Israel—Eran Smilansky, a 28-year-old potato farmer, watched Gazan children go from house to house in his kibbutz on Oct. 7. Hamas terrorists followed. The boys laughed as the gunmen shot or dragged away Israeli families.
"They were like young, young kids," said Smilansky, who defended his home from terrorists for more than six hours that day. "They were going in front of the terrorists, laughing with their friends and looking very calm. I remember thinking, What the fuck?"
Smilansky was one of a dozen survivors of the Nir Oz massacre who told the Washington Free Beacon they witnessed boys or women from the Gaza Strip looting the kibbutz, helping the armed terrorists, and apparently enjoying themselves. The youngest children were around 10 years old, according to several of the survivors, one of whom provided photographs of some of the women and children he saw. The survivors spoke at a hotel in Eilat, Israel's Red Sea resort town, where most of them have been temporarily relocated.
While the involvement of Gazan children and women in Hamas's terrorist attack is not widely understood, evidence exists in the public domain. An online video of a 12-year-old Israeli boy's abduction from Nir Oz, Israel, appears to show a Gazan boy of about the same age accompanying the kidnappers. Boys were among the mob of Gazans recorded crossing into Israel after Hamas terrorists breached the border. And a Hamas-linked Associated Press stringer photographed a Gazan boy entering Kfar Aza, a kibbutz about 15 miles north of Nir Oz.
Hamas has used its nearly two decades of rule over Gaza to weaponize a generation of Palestinians against the Jewish state, according to analysts. In addition to the children, hundreds of ordinary Gazans, including teenagers, joined in Hamas's bloody rampage across southern Israeli communities, the Free Beacon reported.
"Hamas directed the education system, the media, and the religious institutions to brainwash children, who make up half of Gaza's 2.2-million-person population," Michael Milshtein, the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, told the Free Beacon. "Israelis got their first up-close look at this Palestinian Gen Z on Oct. 7.
Like most of the Nir Oz survivors, Eyal Barad and his family hid in the safe room of their house from about 6:30 a.m. until the Israeli military evacuated them 12 or so hours later. But Barad, an engineer, had a rare view of the outside world thanks to a speed camera he had recently set up to bust his neighbors for driving on the sidewalk.
On the camera's livestream, Barad watched three types of Gazans pass by his house: uniformed Hamas commandos carrying automatic weapons, RPGs, and grenades; casually dressed gunmen; and ordinary-looking men, women, and children. Barad said the ordinary Gazans vastly outnumbered the armed terrorists. He estimated that he saw at least a dozen children, who were between the ages of 10 and 15, and 30 women from Gaza.
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