The atrocities of Oct. 7 were not committed by a faceless entity. They were the deliberate, brutal acts of individuals — terrorists who raped women, murdered children, burned families alive and dragged hostages into captivity. Those individuals must be named.
As Father Patrick Desbois recently argued in The Washington Post — with the moral clarity and credibility of someone who has spent decades investigating the perpetrators of Nazi massacres — the time for public disclosure is now.
Israel’s intelligence services likely have extensive lists of the terrorists who carried out the Oct. 7 attacks. But, with few exceptions, those names have remained hidden. That secrecy should end.
Terrorists should not enjoy the shield of anonymity. Every person who participated in the horrors of Oct. 7 should live with the fear that he or she may be identified, hunted, exposed and ultimately held to account — not only in a court of law, but in the court of public conscience.
They should walk through life with the weight of fear of exposure pressing down on them, forcing them to constantly look over their shoulders. That, too, is part of justice.
Naming the criminals is a moral imperative. Each act of brutality was a crime as well as an act of terror. Without a named perpetrator, justice is denied, and the victims are forgotten. The families of those murdered or abducted deserve to know who stole their loved ones. We need to know who they are. Names, faces, roles and crimes.
Israel is reportedly considering a special tribunal to prosecute Oct. 7 attackers. That is a good idea, provided the tribunal prioritizes transparency. The public needs to know, since the killers are not just military targets. They are war criminals. And war criminals must be exposed.
History has taught us the cost of silence. Father Desbois’ organization, Yahad-In Unum, has spent two decades identifying the local collaborators and Nazi executioners responsible for murdering Jews across Eastern Europe. Most of those murderers were never prosecuted.
Many lived full lives under the cover of anonymity. The result has been denial, distortion and unhealed wounds that still fester.
We cannot repeat that mistake. If disclosure is delayed, evidence will disappear. Witnesses will vanish. The facts will grow hazy. And denialism will fill the void. Holocaust denial flourishes not in the face of too much information, but too little. We cannot allow the same to happen here.
Some argue that operational secrecy requires discretion. That may be true in some cases. But many of the terrorists have already been killed. Many more are no longer active combatants. There is no reason to keep their identities hidden.
The stark lesson to future perpetrators everywhere must be clear: You will not vanish into the fog of war. You will not disappear into the anonymity of ideology. If you torture a hostage, you will be named. If you rape, kidnap or murder civilians, you will carry that stain on your name through the rest of your days. If not in prison, then in shame.
This kind of transparency is how we inoculate against denial. It is also how we begin to honor the dead, support the grieving and restore a measure of moral order.
Name them. One by one. Let their names follow them, forever.
