Israel Is Building Its Largest Terror Trial in History.
More than two and a half years after Hamas gunmen crossed the Gaza fence and killed 1,164 people in a single morning, Israel is assembling the largest criminal prosecution in its history. Roughly 400 captured members of Hamas’s Nukhba commando unit — men held since the days after October 7, 2023 — are to be tried in a purpose-built military tribunal in Jerusalem.
On May 11, 2026, the Knesset passed the enabling law 93-0 — a rare unanimous vote uniting coalition and opposition. The government has since allocated more than NIS 1 billion, roughly $350 million, and bulldozers have begun clearing ground at Atarot in northern Jerusalem for a nine-courtroom complex. The charges will run up to genocide. The evidence is the attackers’ own bodycam footage.
It will be the first time Israel’s courts have tried hundreds of defendants for one coordinated attack — and the first serious test of its death-penalty statute since Adolf Eichmann was hanged in 1962. This is the record so far.
- ~400defendantsNukhba operatives held for trial — CNN / Al Jazeera
- 93-0Knesset voteestablishing the special military tribunal — Times of Israel
- 1,164killedon Oct. 7, 2023 — the crime the trials confront — Times of Israel
- $350MbudgetNIS 1 billion allocated for 2026–2029 — Jerusalem Post
The scale is without precedent in Israeli legal history. According to the Jerusalem Post, prosecutors are preparing to try roughly 400 captured Hamas operatives — most of them members of the elite Nukhba force, the shock unit that spearheaded the invasion — for crimes committed across dozens of separate scenes: the Nova music festival, Kibbutz Be’eri, Kibbutz Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, the roads of the western Negev, and the army bases overrun in the first hours. Israel’s criminal-justice system has never before confronted hundreds of defendants charged in a single coordinated event.
The men have been in Israeli custody since the week of the attack — captured on Israeli soil between October 7 and mid-October 2023 and held largely under administrative detention as “unlawful combatants.” For more than two years, none was formally indicted. Ynetnews framed the undertaking in a single headline — “400 suspects, 1,164 prosecutors” — a deliberate mirror of the day’s death toll: nearly one prosecutor, investigator, and support official for every civilian Hamas killed.
“Israel's criminal justice system has never confronted the challenge of trying hundreds of defendants who participated in the same attack simultaneously.”
Times of Israel · legal analysis of the October 7 prosecution effort
Wire services have reached for the only comparison the country offers: Bloomberg and others have called it an “Eichmann-style tribunal,” invoking the 1961 Jerusalem trial of the Nazi organizer Adolf Eichmann — the last time Israel built a special court, televised the proceedings, and ultimately carried out a death sentence. That trial had one defendant in a glass booth. This one may have four hundred.
Israel is preparing for the largest terror prosecution in its history: roughly 400 captured October 7 Nukhba operatives to stand trial in a special Jerusalem tribunal, with charges running up to genocide.
The legal machinery was two years in the making. After lengthy deliberation, the Attorney General’s Office agreed that a bipartisan Knesset bill establishing a special military tribunal — rather than the ordinary civilian courts — would be the framework for the trials. On the night of May 11, 2026, the Knesset passed the “Prosecution Law for the October 7 Massacre” by a vote of 93 in favor, none opposed, in one of the most lopsided votes the 120-seat parliament has recorded on a contested measure.
The tribunal operates as a military court but is purpose-built for this one caseload. It is authorized to try the Gazans captured in Israel in the days after the attack for offenses committed between October 7 and October 10, 2023, as well as offenses against hostages held in Gaza afterward. Crucially, the law also bars anyone suspected of, charged with, or convicted of October 7 offenses from any future prisoner-swap or release scheme — a direct response to the deals that returned earlier convicted attackers to Gaza.
Creates a special military tribunal in Jerusalem, staffed by 15 senior judges qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, or international jurists approved by the justice minister in consultation with the foreign minister.
Panels scale with the case: a single-defendant case is heard by three judges (one a retired district-court judge); a multi-defendant case is heard by a five-judge panel.
Opens the proceedings to the public — audio and video recorded, with key hearings (openings, verdict, sentencing) broadcast on a dedicated website. Israel does not normally televise trials.
Excludes convicts from prisoner swaps — no release, no exchange, for anyone tied to October 7.
October 7 was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. The savages who did it must be brought to justice — and the hostages must come home. There will be a heavy price to pay.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Truth Social · paraphrase of President Trump's repeated public statements on the October 7 attack
The tribunal can charge the full ladder of offenses. At the top sits genocide, prosecuted under Israel’s 1950 Law for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide — the domestic statute built on the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, and the same law used to convict Eichmann. Below it: crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder, rape, abduction, and looting, plus terror offenses under Israel’s 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law and charges of harming Israeli sovereignty, causing war, and assisting an enemy in wartime.
A conviction for genocide carries the death penalty. That makes these trials the first real invocation of capital punishment in Israel in more than sixty years. The state has executed exactly one person in its history — Eichmann, in 1962. In March 2026, the Knesset had already passed a broader “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law, 62-48; the October 7 tribunal law folds capital exposure into a dedicated framework for the specific crimes of that day.
The first concrete filing has already taken shape. Ynetnews reports that prosecutors from the Southern District Attorney’s Office, led by attorney Erez Padan, assembled charge sheets against the first 22 Nukhba terrorists accused in the massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz — to be filed as the opening movement of a single unified mega-indictment known internally as the “7.10 case.” Trials will then be organized scene by scene: Be’eri, Nova, Nir Oz, and the rest.
Israel will bring the Hamas terrorists who carried out the October 7 massacre to justice in a court of law, with due process, public proceedings, and the full weight of the evidence they filmed themselves.
The prosecution’s central asset is that the attackers documented their own crimes. Many Nukhba fighters wore GoPro and body cameras during the assault, filming the murders and, in some cases, uploading the footage or sending it to victims’ families. Investigators have compiled evidence from those body cameras, from roadside and kibbutz security cameras, from victims’ dashboard cameras, from intercepted call recordings, and from both the attackers’ and the victims’ social-media accounts.
The investigative backbone runs through the Israel Police’s Lahav 433 serious-crimes unit, which collected testimonies from roughly 1,700 survivors of the attack and from 400 members of the security forces, alongside interrogation transcripts from the Shin Bet and intelligence from the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate. Ynetnews reported that some prosecutors, having watched the footage on a loop to turn it into court-admissible evidence, developed insomnia and nightmares — the human cost of documenting an atrocity in legal form.
Not everything has gone smoothly. Israel’s State Comptroller found that prison overcrowding strained the Shin Bet and slowed the trial preparation, and a string of legal and procedural challenges kept a single indictment from being filed for more than two years. Israel also reportedly asked the United States not to indict any October 7 perpetrators first, wanting its own courts to hold the primary claim to justice.
New GoPro footage shows Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israel unopposed on Oct. 7.
The physical courthouse is being built from scratch. MK Simcha Rothman, chairman of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, announced that bulldozers had begun preparing ground in the Atarot industrial zone of northern Jerusalem, following approval of the budget. The planned complex is designed to hold nine courtrooms and support up to 15 judicial panels, heavily fortified to allow hundreds of Nukhba detainees to be transported daily from prison to court under heavy guard.
In early June 2026, the government approved a budgetary framework of more than NIS 1 billion — about $350 million — for 2026 through 2029. It covers not only the court complex but prosecution offices, an IDF headquarters facility, staffing, secure transportation, communications and broadcasting systems, medical services, and victim-support functions. Recruitment of the designated judges, per the Jerusalem Post, was in its final stages, with the legal system preparing for the first indictments in the near term.
9 courtrooms planned; capacity for up to 15 judicial panels running in parallel.
15 senior judges — Supreme Court-qualified or approved international jurists — plus a court staff reported near 400.
More than NIS 1 billion ($350M) budgeted for 2026–2029: courthouse, prosecution, IDF facility, transport, and broadcasting.
Location: the Atarot industrial zone, northern Jerusalem — MK Rothman: Jerusalem is “the capital of justice.”
The law places unusual weight on the victims. Israel’s Crime Victims’ Rights Law will apply throughout, and the chief military prosecutor is to establish a dedicated unit to protect those rights. Families of the murdered and kidnapped, returned hostages, and survivors of rape and abuse will be able to attend hearings in person or watch from a separate hall — and the public broadcast is designed, in part, so that the record of what happened is fixed in the open rather than contested in the dark.
The victim pool is vast. At the Nova music festival alone, at least 344 civilians and 34 members of the security forces were killed, according to Times of Israel reporting — the single deadliest scene of the day. Across all locations, 1,164 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. Every one of those scenes generates witnesses, and the trials are being organized so that survivors testify to the events of their own kibbutz, their own festival field, their own family.
“Special emphasis will be placed on victims' rights, including the families of those murdered and kidnapped, returned hostages and victims of rape and abuse.”
Ynetnews · describing the tribunal's victim-protection framework
The tribunal has drawn sharp objections, and an accountability site owes readers the strongest version of them. Al Jazeera and Israeli and Palestinian rights groups have labeled the proceedings “show trials,” arguing the law makes the death penalty too easy to impose and strips away fair-trial safeguards — including, critics warn, by admitting evidence they say may have been obtained through coercion. Amnesty International has called for the broader death-penalty statute to be repealed, and the European Union called the measure a “grave regression” from Israel’s decades-long moratorium on capital punishment.
Israel’s answer is on the record: the tribunal will prosecute under existing criminal statutes, apply formal victims’-rights protections, and broadcast its proceedings precisely so the process is visible rather than secret. Defendants in these cases are, as a matter of law, presumed innocent until a verdict — a standard that will be tested in public, on camera, before a court the whole world can watch.
The people who carried out the October 7 slaughter should never walk free again. No deals, no swaps. They must face full justice for what they did.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Truth Social · paraphrase of President Trump's repeated position that October 7 perpetrators face no release
Four hundred defendants. Dozens of crime scenes. A billion shekels, nine courtrooms, and a death-penalty statute unused since 1962. Israel spent more than two years unable to file a single indictment; now it is building an entire courthouse to file hundreds. The evidence was filmed by the men in the dock. The question the Atarot tribunal will answer, in public and on the record, is whether the largest terror prosecution in Israeli history can also be a fair one.
