MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) on Sunday submitted a bill that aims to ban denial of the massacre committed by Hamas terrorists in communities near the Gaza border on October 7.
The explanatory notes to the bill state that "on the seventh day of October 2023, Hamas terrorists and their aides carried out a massacre of Israeli residents living near the border with the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of civilians, men and women, girls and children were kidnapped. During Hamas terrorists’ storming of towns near the border, they slaughtered, murdered, dismembered, raped and looted the residents of Israel just because they were Israelis and just because they were Jews."
"This is the deadliest and most brutal terrorist attack carried out, during which over 1,000 men and women were murdered, including the elderly and babies, over 240 people were kidnapped and many hundreds more were injured. The denial of the massacre is an attempt to rewrite history already at this stage, in an attempt to hide, minimize and facilitate the crimes that were committed against the Jewish people and the State of Israel."
"The denial of the massacre and expressions of support for the acts of the terrorists require special, serious and immediate attention on behalf of the state," the proposal reads.
The bill was submitted on the same day in which MK Iman Khatib-Yasin (Ra’am) denied during a TV interview the horrors of the October 7 Hamas massacre.
During the interview, Khatib-Yasin was asked about the uncensored compilation of footage of the massacre that was shown to MKs last week.
Khatib-Yasin admitted that she did not watch the screening but said that from what she heard from a "first-person account," the footage did not show the slaughter of babies or the rape of women.
Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas demanded that Khatib-Yasin resign from the party over the comments.
She subsequently apologized for the comments, saying, "I was mistaken, I am sorry for it and apologize. I had no intention to belittle or deny the shocking massacre on October 7 and the terrible acts against women, babies, and the elderly who were murdered in the south. From the first day, I expressed a clear position regarding the condemnation and denunciation of these terrible acts against Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel on that dark Saturday, and I should emphasize this again, especially now."