*** Warning, this article contains shocking details ***
Great reporter for Paris Match, Nicolas Delesalle went to a morgue in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Since Saturday October 7 and the Hamas attack in Israel, the bodies have been identified there, with difficulty. “A lot of people say to me ‘that must have been difficult for you’, but for me it only lasted two hours. Those who work on site do this all the time and have a direct relationship with the bodies,” Nicolas Delesalle tells 20 minutes. Interview.
In Tel Aviv, you were able to go to a morgue where every day dozens and dozens of bodies are identified. How did you organize your report?
The military base where the morgue is located is located in south Tel Aviv. With Alvaro Canovas, the photographer of Paris Match, we go there by ourselves in the morning. We spend time there, but we don’t have the permissions. Everything is controlled. We make phone calls and are informed that we must contact a spokesperson for the Israeli army because a tour is organized for journalists the same day, at 10 p.m.
In your thread published this Wednesday on X, you talk about your arrival in this place. What did you discover there?
When we arrived, there were lots of white tents, lots of people in white suits with masks. First, former head of the military rabbinate Israel Weiss speaks and tells us: “Look, the people here weren’t just killed. Many suffered abuse. » He speaks for about twenty minutes, we ask questions. Then, they opened two containers among the twenty installed. Each had 50 seats. We felt a kind of odor, it was violent. We could get closer if we wanted, but I didn’t want to.
I also met a young woman in her thirties, Abigaël, who takes care of women and girls for purification rites. She tells me that there is not much to do in the rites here, because the people who have been murdered are considered to be pure. I see in her face that she is traumatized. Lots of people say to me “that must have been difficult for you”, but for me it only lasted two hours. Those who work on site do this all the time and have a direct relationship with the bodies. Another woman who was working had her face eaten away by distress. She no longer had words, but above all tears. Talking to journalists at this time is an outlet for them. I don’t know how these people do it, how they will get back up.
From the first day, I understood that it was not just war, but people massacred at a bus stop, old ladies. Every possible crime has been committed. This is what I was told on site: “everything that was possible to do has been done. “.
These piled up bodies also show the horror of war. A war which according to Israel Weiss, was not only aimed at killing. We are talking about burned bodies, also decapitated. These bodies make it possible to carry out investigations into what happened on October 7. But identification is urgent…
That’s the whole problem with this identification. There are several hundred, if not thousands, of bodies. Their two tasks are to identify and document. There are plenty of horrible examples they tell us. Some bodies no longer have faces, some are burned alive. There are plenty of young people burned at the festival. Hundreds. How do we identify them quickly because the bodies begin to deteriorate despite refrigeration? The only exception is the military, the vast majority of whom have already been identified because they have their fingerprints.
You have been covering wars for many years and yet this one seems to be more violent in the description you give…
From the first day, I understood that it was not just war, but people massacred at a bus stop, old ladies. Every possible crime has been committed. This is what I was told on site: “everything that was possible to do has been done. » Boutcha [en Ukraine]for example, it was an eruption of absolute violence at a given moment. But less on the rest of the front.
There, it was as if there had been an order to torture as much as possible. Whether it’s all the testimonies from the music festival, all the testimonies in the kibbutz, they’re the same. There was a sadistic, perverse game to make people suffer. This phenomenon brings together all wars, but not on this scale, in one day. There, it was a massacre.
In this war, there is also the difficulty for journalists to inform. Events must be reported factually but also without sensationalism. As a major reporter, how do we arm ourselves to report the horror without terrorizing with our words, our images?
It’s not easy to convey when I see people who doubt the veracity of the attack. It’s very complicated. We must stick to the facts, to everything factual we have. You have to interpret the minimum, ask the stupidest questions. “How do we know the women were raped? – Thanks to specific markings on the thighs. » There is the multiplication of sources which prove the horror, it cannot be just a simple communication. The smell cannot be created, nor can traces of blood in the kibbutzim.
It is important that we do this testimonial work in order to serve historians later to help define exactly what happened. We still have a fragmentary view. But every journalist who goes there reports evidence of crimes against humanity, evidence of war crimes. Sometimes there are truths bigger than communication.