As war in Gaza rages, Israel weighs Eichmann-style public trials for October 7 attackers
- Hundreds of Hamas militants are being held in Israeli prisons after October 7 attack
- Brutality of the attack has prompted calls for creating a special military tribunal
Over four months in 1961, Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann sat in a bulletproof booth in a makeshift Jerusalem courtroom and, with cameras whirring, was tried by the state of Israel for crimes against humanity.
Two years later, after failed appeals, he was hanged – the last execution in the country’s history.
The widely-covered trial held one man accountable for his crimes, but it was aimed at a larger purpose: to chronicle for a sceptical world the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews in irrefutable detail.
Since October 7, when thousands of Hamas operatives swarmed into southern Israel in a spree of killing, raping and kidnapping – spurring Israel to launch a punishing war in Gaza – Israelis have been talking about whether to put the hundreds of fighters captured on trial in a similar fashion, especially their leaders.
The prospect of such a set of trials is daunting from numerous perspectives: should it be domestic or international? Did enough evidence survive? Can individuals be linked to specific crimes? If those caught are minor players, is the spectacle worth it?
There’s also a more complex matter. The world’s view in 1961 of the tiny, struggling state of Israel and of the menace of Nazism is a far cry from how it sees today’s rich, nuclear-powered Jewish state pummeling Gaza and the Islamist Palestinian movement of Hamas.