What Matters Now to Dr. Joe Uziel: ID'ing Oct. 7 victims via forensic archaeology

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.

The destruction wrought by Hamas on October 7 at the small Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza border was so complete that in many cases, only microscopic remnants of those 1,200 who were killed there can be found today.

The Israel Antiquities Authority is accustomed to searching for such human remains — albeit for people who lived hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. Today, some 30 volunteers from the IAA are working in shifts, sifting through the rubble — in Be’eri, in Kfar Aza, in the cars that were torched fleeing the Supernova rave.

“We're searching for things that are so small that if it's not using archaeological methodologies, they're not possible to be found,” the IAA's Dead Sea Scrolls unit head Dr. Joe Uziel told The Times of Israel this week. 

He honed his CSI skills on, for example, remains of the Babylonian conquest in Jerusalem’s City of David. Today, he is volunteering to help identify those killed near Gaza with the same techniques.

The team of volunteers has so far found the remains of some 60 people who were killed. But identifying who they are is difficult because some of the small bone fragments are from the terrorists that came into the kibbutzim, others are from foreign workers and young children whose DNA is not on file.

So this week, archaeologist Dr. Joe Uziel tells us, what matters now.

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IMAGE: IAA archaeologist Dr. Joe Uziel (left) in a home destroyed by Hamas during its murderous rampage on October 7, 2023, sifting through the rubble in search of human remains. (Shai Halevi/Israel Antiquities Authority) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.