Zakka members began collecting the bodies of the dead immediately after October 7 (Israeli press)

An investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz showed that a Jewish organization working to recover human remains after the attacks published false accounts about what happened last October 7 (the Al-Aqsa flood battle) with the aim of collecting donations and getting rid of the debts it had accumulated.

According to the investigation, the organization began its work collecting bodies in devastated communities in southern Israel immediately after the attack last October, while the Israeli army marginalized soldiers trained to recover remains.

Haaretz described “Zakka Jerusalem Branch” as an extremist religious and Orthodox organization whose members are extremists.

The lengthy investigation published by Haaretz - today, Friday - recounted stories about members of the organization exploiting their presence at the sites of the attacks to photograph and obtain donations.

The investigation quoted eyewitnesses that Zakka members were making video calls and photographing bodies placed in plastic bags and that the place was specially arranged to arouse the emotions of donors.

The investigation indicated that some of the activities of the organization - which, on the eve of the war, was involved in millions of shekels in debt - were directed towards fundraising, public relations, media interviews and donor tours.

Relationship with the army

The investigation revealed that the occupation army, instead of deploying hundreds of soldiers trained in identification and collecting human remains, the Home Front Command chose to use “Zakka,” a private organization, along with soldiers in the military rabbinate’s research unit, known by the acronym Yasar.

According to what was reported in the investigation, Haim Otmzin, head of the Zakka “special forces”, works as a reserve officer in the Home Front Command’s rescue unit.

According to some sources cited by Haaretz, Otmzin played a central role in the connection between the organization and the army and was responsible for many of the sites where the attacks occurred.

Zakat Al-Quds prevented competing organizations from entering the sites in which they were assigned to work.

The investigation revealed that Otmzin is the link between Zakka Jerusalem and the Home Front Command’s rescue unit, and that he not only serves in the unit as a reserve officer but is also considered very close to its leaders.

Otmzin (left) received an honor from the army in 2022 (Israeli press)

bungle

According to the investigation, Zakka acted unprofessionally, according to the investigation sources, and quoted an officer as saying, “We received their bags without documents, and sometimes with parts of bodies that had nothing to do with each other.” He adds that such problems made the identification process very difficult, and that some of the bags It came several days after the outbreak of war.

He also quotes one of the volunteers, “There were bags with two skulls, and two-handed bags, with no way of knowing who it was,” and according to one of the volunteers, “Zacchaeus took part of a corpse and left the other part in the same house.”

One person who toured kibbutzim in the area with Zakka said he visited homes that had been designated as having been cleared of human remains, and yet saw human remains in them.

Generous donations

Haaretz noted that there is a conflict between organizations working to collect human remains from accident sites, and attributed the reason to “money, and a lot of it,” as it described it.

She stated that tens of millions of shekels are allocated to this mission through donations and financial support from the state.

The investigation revealed that Zakka Jerusalem was facing financial problems and debts, and that after the October 7 attacks, it was able to collect more than 50 million shekels ($13.7 million).

Zakka volunteers did not do their work properly (Israeli press)

Public relations

As part of a public relations campaign led by Benjamin Netanyahu's government, the investigation stated that the National Information Directorate (in the Prime Minister's Office) asked the ZAKKA organization to participate in media activity for both donors and opinion leaders around the world.

The government saw these tours as part of the country's efforts to achieve victory in world public opinion, and the organization also accompanied donor tours for the benefit of the kibbutzim and their reconstruction.

Fundraising began the day after the attacks, and according to the investigation, Zakka employed the services of the public relations office, which accompanied and photographed volunteers already in the first weeks of the war.

Since the second week of the war, the Ministry of Defense began placing Zakka's name alongside appeals for public donations.

Zakka received 500,000 shekels after agreeing with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to clean 500 buildings damaged in the attacks.

Zakka also attributed the work of other volunteers to her. In some cases, ZAKA volunteers were seen wrapping bodies already wrapped in Israeli army bags, and the new bag prominently displayed the ZAKA logo.

He quoted a volunteer from another organization, “We wrapped the body in a body bag, and after a few minutes, the Zakka team arrived, and the team leader, a senior member of the organization, wrapped the body in a Zakka bag.”

ZAKKA volunteers communicated with supporters from their workplaces and arranged locations to influence donors (Israeli press)

Fabricated stories

The investigation mentioned a number of stories that had no basis in reality and that Zakka and the Netanyahu government relied on to distort the image of the Palestinian resistance.

The Zakka organization’s social media account posted a video of one of its members crying and saying, “We saw a woman, about 30 years old, and she was lying on the ground in a large pool of blood, facing the ground.” We turned her over in order to put her in the bag.

He added, "She was pregnant," and he stopped to catch his breath, and continued by saying, "Her stomach was swollen, and the child was still attached to the umbilical cord when he was stabbed, and she was shot in the back of the head. I do not know whether she suffered and saw her child killed or not."

The investigation stated that this horrific incident did not happen and that it was one of several stories that were circulated without any basis, indicating that there was no evidence of this incident, and no one in the kibbutz had heard of this woman.

A senior official in the Zakka organization was quoted as admitting to Haaretz that the organization knows that the incident did not happen.

In another video clip, the same volunteer appears crying and tells how he found the burned and mutilated bodies of 20 children in one of the kibbutzim (which was proven to be a lie). This volunteer told Haaretz that this incident occurred behind the dining hall in Kfar Azza, while in another case, he said He was in Perry.

The newspaper indicates that the children who were killed in Kfar Azza were Jephthah Kotz, 14 years old, and his brother Yonatan, 16 years old.

The investigation revealed that Zakka was charged with spreading false information in December 2022.

He also revealed that Zakka had inflated the announced number of volunteers for years in order to obtain more funding.

Source: Israeli press