Youngest October 7 victim was just 14 hours old when his mother was shot in the womb

Telegraph

18-03-2025

The youngest victim of the October 7 massacre was just 14 hours old, a UK parliamentary report has found.
The study also disclosed the existence of another Briton who died in the attack, bringing the total number of UK citizens killed to 18.
Lord Roberts, the historian who has presided over the report, said its purpose was to produce a definitive account of the Hamas attacks to 'counter pernicious' attempts at denying or minimising the atrocities.
The report's main findings – corroborating studies that have come out of Israel – found that planning by Hamas had begun in 2018, five years before the massacre; and that 7,000 militants had taken part in a 'co-ordinated assault' launched from Gaza on 55 separate locations in Israel.
It also confirmed that the desecration of corpses had been 'widespread', including the beheading and mutilation of dead bodies which had also been booby-trapped with grenades.
The October 7 Parliamentary Commission Report further concluded that 'acts of sexual violence ' had occurred 'across all sites' during the attack and that several fully or partially naked bodies from the waist down had been recovered, corroborating previous findings by the United Nation 's special representative on sexual violence.
The youngest victim was identified as Naama abu Rashed, who suffered a gunshot wound while still in his mother's womb. He died just 14 hours after doctors performed an emergency delivery. The baby, the daughter of Bedouin parents, was born alive but died at 10pm on the day of the attacks.
Her mother – also named Naama – had woken her husband in the early hours of October 7 to tell him she had started to have labour pains. She was nine months pregnant. The family, who are Israeli citizens, left their home in Ar'ara, according to the parliamentary report, travelling at speed in the direction of Soroka hospital in Be'er Sheba. But Hamas terrorists had set up a blockade at a road junction.
'Bullet had hit the baby'
The report states: 'At the Magen junction they came up to two vehicles that had stopped. Abu Rashed 'blinked his lights' and saw a truck with a carpet in the back. Suddenly, someone in the truck moved the carpet to reveal a machine gun and opened fire at the car. It then drove away.
'Naama alerted her husband that she was bleeding from her stomach and they tried to race to the hospital.' But Naama's husband Tarafi was forced to pull over a second time to change a tyre which had been shot out by the gunmen. The family came under Hamas attack a second time before an Israeli ambulance arrived and rushed them to hospital. The report states: 'Naama survived, but the bullet had hit the baby, still in the uterus, in her leg…. Although the baby was born alive – and was named Na'ama – she died at 22:00.63. At 14 hours old, she was the youngest of Hamas' victims on 7 October.'
The report – for the first time – names all 18 British nationals killed in the attacks. It confirms that Rotem Kalderon, a 66-year-old teacher and resident of Kibbutz Be'eri, held dual UK-Israeli nationality. Mrs Kalderon had not previously been named in lists of British casualties. Her body remained missing and unidentified for two weeks after the attack on the kibbutz which borders Gaza.
Sixteen British nationals killed in the initial attack had already been identified, along with a further UK citizen, 51-year-old Nadav Popplewell, who died while being held as a hostage by Hamas. His brother Roi Popplewell was killed in his home.
Mrs Kalderon, a mother-of-three, locked herself in a safe room in her kibbutz house and messaged family and friends for two hours until her death at the hands of the terrorists.
'The most beautiful wife and mother'
On Facebook, her daughter Mika Kalderon posted a tribute. Mrs Kalderon was born and raised on Kibbutz Be'eri but she had taken dual citizenship. Her father Michael Goodrich had emigrated to Israel, having worked as a PE teacher in the UK. Her daughter Mika Kalderon, wrote in a eulogy posted on Facebook after her mother's body was found: 'A week ago, we said goodbye to our beloved mother. The most beautiful wife and mother, vocal, free and inspiring. An inspiration, who always fought to fulfil yourself, who followed your dreams and who always listened and touched everyone.'
She continued, 'I love you, and my heart is broken to pieces, but I promise to find the strength to continue. And when you meet Dad, hug him tight and raise a toast to our lives.'
Writing in the foreword to the October 7 report, commissioned and published by the All Party Parliamentary Group for UK-Israel, Lord Roberts said: ' Holocaust denial took a few years to take root in pockets of society, but on 7 October 2023 it took only hours for people to claim that the massacres in southern Israel had not taken place.
' Hamas and its allies, both in the Middle East and equally shamefully in the West, have sought to deny the atrocities, despite the ironic fact that much of the evidence for the massacres derives from film footage from cameras carried by the terrorists themselves.
'The present Report has been undertaken to counter such pernicious views, and to lay down incontrovertible proof – for now and for the years to come – that nearly 1,200 innocent people were indeed murdered by Hamas and its allies, and very often in scenes of sadistic barbarism not seen in world history since the Rape of Nanjing in 1937.'
He said the emergence of 'several' parliamentary candidates who had 'openly attempted to justify the October 7 atrocities' at last year's general election was evidence of a 'perversion of reason and rejection of human decency'.
Lord Roberts' report has received backing from fellow historians in providing an 'irrefutable record' of what happened on October 7. Sir Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at Harvard and Stanford universities, said: 'Those who wish to understand the repulsive, pathological nature of anti-Semitism should read the report. Those who doubt the truly evil character of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad must read it.'
Simon Sebag Montefiore described the report as 'an important and essential record, chronicle and investigation of one of the most atrocious crimes of terroristic barbarity in modern history'.
The report found a total of 1,182 people were killed in a 'large-scale, coordinated assault' by around 7,000 Hamas militants that had been years in the planning.
Civilians accounted for 73 per cent of the victims, the report found. The oldest victim was a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor.
Along with Ms Kalderon and the Popplewell brothers, the other British nationals killed by Hamas were: Bernard Cowan, 57; Sgt Nathanel Young, 20; Danny Darlington, 34; Jake Aaron Marlowe, 26; Aner Shapira, 22; Sgt Maj Dvora Abraham, 40; Yonatan Rapoport, 41; Lianne Sharabi, 48; Noiya Sharabi, 16; Yahel Sharabi, 13; Maj Benjamin Trakeniski, 32; Yannai and Liel Hetzroni-Heller, both 12; Sgt 1st Class Joseph Malachi Guedalia, 22; Dor Hanan Shafir, 30.
Kemi Badenoch, Conservative Party Leader, said 'We have seen a rise in anti-Semitism since October 7th. On streets across Britain, weekly marches have spewed modern-day hatred of the Jews, often under the guise of ' anti-Zionism '.
'Too many are still deliberately distorting the events of that terrible day, which is why this factual record is an important reminder of what actually happened.
'As this report makes clear, it was a highly coordinated massacre of the Jewish people, including eighteen British nationals, by terrorists. I have personally heard horrific stories from parents whose children were stolen from them, and from first responders who witnessed sexual violence against women and girls.
'These atrocities unfolded before our eyes, and we must never allow anyone to undermine or justify unspeakable terror.'