The images of horror to which ZAKA members are exposed in the destroyed communities and kibbutzim around Gaza shock even the most veteran of them. The evacuation of hundreds of bodies and the difficult and unimaginable sights cannot be left in the mind.
Nathan Koenig, a ZAKA volunteer, described this morning (Thursday) in a conversation with Niv Raskin on 'Morning News' on Keshet 12: "I have been a ZAKA volunteer for 27 years. This week, this is the first time in my life that I have seen bodies crying. I don't know how to explain and describe these sights. It doesn't connect that people are the ones who did such a thing. I have seen difficult things in my life, but I don't have the words to describe what is happening in the town of Be'eri.
""The first night I was in the party area in Badami, we collected hundreds of bodies, 200 or so. When I got there, on the way, I began to understand what was happening. These are not murderers, these are animals. They abused people for a good few hours in a way that I don't know if Mengele abused like that. It doesn't make sense. I don't know if it will ever make sense to me. I was at the attack in Sbarro, I saw children who were hit by a bomb that exploded, but I didn't see that a human being could do what they did with their own hands. It's unthinkable.".
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The terrorists set fire to many houses, said presenter Raskin.
""There are hundreds of houses there and not a single house that resembles anything that looks like a house. Everything is in ruins. If they couldn't slaughter the people with their hands, then they burned them. People went into the barracks and died from the smoke, because they suffocated inside. They somehow let smoke in. Everything is ash and dirt. You don't find anything inside these houses. There was a family that insisted that their family member was inside the house. We searched the house several times together with the army and the MHAP, but we didn't find the person. The house was burned to the ground. After they insisted on us again. It's a house with an attic and a basement. Everything is burned. There was a smell in one of the sooty rooms. We hit the walls and one of the walls moved and we discovered a door. He locked himself inside and died from the smoke. He described the abuse he suffered to his family and that's how we identified him.".
Koenig: "There are no cats on the street, there are lots of carcasses. They didn't even leave a cat there. They killed dogs too. We at ZAKA are used to handling incidents like car accidents. I've never been under fire. Here we worked saving lives, which is the most important thing. The sights inside these communities, no eye has ever seen anything like this. It's seeing and not believing. If the people saw the pictures, the people wouldn't be sitting at home. Maybe we should show people what they did there, so that something like this doesn't happen again.".
What image stuck with you the most?
""People built themselves a house, a greenhouse, raised children. You enter the house and see someone going over them one by one. I won't give exact descriptions, but there were people who did things to them that the eye can't capture, you don't understand what you're seeing. The identification process is very difficult, it's not normal identification. There are many cases that are simply unidentifiable.".
