What does one wear to a massacre?
That was the strange question that popped into my head as I prepared (and prepared) to visit the Israeli consulate in New York on Friday morning to view 45 minutes of the hundreds of hours of footage collected from the Hamas bloodbath. on October 7 in the south of the country. Israel.
Of course, I had an idea of the horrors I would see.
For weeks, photographs and videos showing the results of the terrorist attack have emerged from Israel and the Gaza Strip, some even as they were taking place.
The dead terrorists had written orders that included instructions to operate GoPro cameras to capture their evil escapades and sometimes broadcast them in real time on social media.
Hamas and its Iranian masters wanted the dirty deeds documented. Their goal was to terrorize an entire nation and beyond by showing what they are capable of.
And they sought to inspire their fellow travelers to follow their example and intensify the jihad.
However, some people still say they do not believe such things have happened, and skeptics are found in the more educated, elite sectors of society.
Pro-Palestinian protesters attend a “Brooklyn Flood for Gaza” rally, as the conflict between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group continues on Saturday.REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Hence the special event on Friday.
I used to be a film critic and I can tell you that the atmosphere at this screening was like no other.
None of us wanted to see those places. But none of us would pass up the opportunity. The world needs to know what happened, as even “reputable” news organizations refuse to tell the truth about that horrific day.
The journalists, about 20 in total, had to leave our cell phones and Apple Watch at the door. Some of the images had never been published, and Israeli authorities had their reasons for showing them only to journalists and a few other select people, such as President Biden. Of course, they are concerned about the feelings of the families involved.
Nor do they want such horror and humiliation to be broadcast around the world: “We have values,” as retired and reservist Major General Mickey Edelstein declared in a Zoom briefing from Israel after the screening.
Am I trying to give proper context before describing what I saw? Or am I putting off putting into words images I will never forget?
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I have learned how ugly the world can be. I recently spent a few weeks in Ukraine, where I heard firsthand story after story about the indignities and inhumanity of the Russian occupation.
I have interviewed Iranian escapees from Tehran’s notorious dissident prison, including a young brother and sister tortured in front of each other.
But human beings still have the capacity to cause shock, if Hamas members can be called human beings. What happened on October 7th will haunt me for a long time.
Everyone should be.
The footage makes it easier for you to understand things, a little. Terrorists shoot at motorists on a highway. They enter a kibbutz and first the tires of an ambulance explode. They shoot a dog, which remains trembling in the street. They set fire to a house. Then they start entering the houses.
Israel collected videos from a wide variety of sources: public CCTV, traffic cameras, surveillance cameras of terrorists and victims, as well as their social media posts and messages home. In body camera footage of the fighters, the killers can be heard breathing deeply as they nervously approach their prey.
I wanted to look the other way
It was difficult to watch. Even more difficult for the Israelis. The consul general later admitted that he could not stay for the entire screening. Another staff member seemed to have a harder time seeing and hearing some of the same images as I did: a father trying to get his young children, dressed only in underwear, to safety in a backyard shelter.
A grenade lands before he can close the door and he is dead. A terrorist takes his two children back to the house and a security camera captures their devastation. The explosion blinded one eye of a child. The other falls to the ground and pleads piteously: “Why am I alive? Why am I alive? (We are told that the children managed to escape, at least physically.)
We see houses on kibbutzim, fields where young concertgoers ran, Israel Defense Forces facilities with terrified young women huddled in a room.
Blood. Blood everywhere, traces, puddles. The burned bodies continue to smoke. A man with his nose torn off. Headless Israeli soldiers. An older woman dressed only in brightly colored underwear was never meant to be seen by so many people. Piles of bodies surrounded by young people celebrating and chanting “Allahu akbar!”
Some images have been geolocated in Gaza. They pull a broken woman from the back of a Jeep, the back of her pants covered in blood, and carry her to the back seat. We can easily understand what is probably happening to him there. Young people approach shouting, trying to get a look inside, some recording with their mobile phones. Two older men approach; Eventually this will stop, I almost believe. No: they also wanted to see it well.
The women who were raped had their legs broken, consulate staff said. Then they killed them.
Many times I wanted to look away, but I forced myself not to. We journalists had to see what happened so we could tell it to the world.
However, here is a line from a CBS News article written by a journalist who saw the footage in Israel: “In another clip, a militant stands next to a man who appears to have been shot in the stomach and attacks him several times. sometimes with a garden stick. hoe.”
The words “terrorist” or “terrorism” do not appear in the piece. (They also do not appear in the New York Times report on that projection.)
I can tell you that it was not “a militant” who “stands next to a man.” A group of terrorists argue over who should behead the man, a Thai worker who is bleeding profusely from his stomach but is still alive. Someone attacks him repeatedly with a hoe, attempting to decapitate him. Each time, the terrorist shouts: “Allahu akbar!”
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Support for atrocities
That difference in details is why consulate staff endured 45 minutes of misery.
They need people to see what happened and spread the word to counter those who claim it wasn’t as bad as they claim. Journalists from supposedly serious publications insist that Hamas cannot be said to have beheaded babies; Sure, dead headless babies were found, but who knows who committed the act?
The hatred I witnessed goes beyond those who entered Israel that day. A young man uses a dead Israeli woman’s phone to call her parents and brag about having killed 10 Jews “with my own hands.”
He pleads, “Please be proud of me, Dad.”
That is the culture that Israel must combat even after destroying those who planned and carried out the October 7 massacre.
And then there’s New York City. A day after the screening, thousands of anti-Semites marched into Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge after a demonstration at the Brooklyn Museum. In front were people holding a banner that said “By any means necessary.”
Understand what signs like this, which are becoming more common, mean.
These people know what happened on October 7th. They are gathering in large numbers in New York and other cities across the country to show their support for the animals that committed these atrocities.
They are as bloodthirsty as the heavy-breathing terrorists whose voices the people of Israel will never get out of their heads.
Kelly Jane Torrance is The Post’s opinion editor.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn