Why hasn’t Israel charged a single Oct. 7th terrorist?

Thousands of Gazan terrorists, believed to have taken part in the October 7 massacres, are languishing in Israeli prisons — still without being indicted.

By World Israel News Staff

Nearly two years after the October 7 massacres, Israeli prosecutors have yet to file criminal charges against a single Gazan arrested that day who is believed to have participated in the atrocities.

In April, Israeli state attorneys announced they were close to indicting 22 terrorists specifically suspected of taking part in the Kibbutz Nir Oz massacre.

The announcement was widely viewed as an attempt to appease the Trump administration, which had floated the idea of extraditing terrorists who murdered American citizens in the community to face trial in the United States — a legal possibility under U.S. federal law.

However, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday, those charges never materialized.

Not one indictment has been formally filed against any of the thousands of terrorists who have been sitting in Israeli prisons for the past 22 months.

Moran Gez, a former senior prosecutor with inside knowledge of the cases against the terrorist, and MK Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beitenu) told the Times that a series of missteps has complicated efforts to prosecute the attackers.

In the chaos immediately after the slaughter, police failed to follow proper evidence-collection protocols. The massive number of victims has made it almost impossible to complete basic ballistic work, such as matching bullet wounds to specific firearms, the Times reported.

Adding to the challenge, many victims were buried quickly in accordance with Jewish religious customs, before full forensic examinations could be conducted.

Malinovsky suggested that police and military officials may also fear that public trials would expose failures in their response during the critical hours and days after the attacks.

“They don’t want that discourse,” she told the Times.

Gez also noted that traumatized survivors of the massacres were evacuated from their communities and scattered throughout the country, with investigators struggling to track them down and interview them.

In late May, Malinovsky co-sponsored a bill with MK Simcha Rothman aimed at bypassing some of the legal obstacles and enabling the terrorists to be brought to justice.

The bill, however, still requires several more readings before it can become law.