‘It’s important that we bear witness.’ Videos show horror of Hamas attack
A father and two boys, around 10-12 years old, are rounded up by a gunman with a Kalashnikov rifle, the magazine loaded with ammunition. The gunman pushes the three into a closet then throws a grenade. After the explosion, the boys come out, bloodied, but alive and able to walk. Their father is dead.
The boys sit in the home’s living room, wailing while the gunman opens the family’s refrigerator and takes out a bottle of soda to drink.
One boy can’t see anymore. His condition might be psychosomatic. It might be his father’s blood caked to his eyes. It also could be from the grenade blast.
They both beg for their mother, who isn’t home, presumably spared from the massacre on Oct. 7 in Israel at the hands and trigger fingers of Hamas militants.
The hellish scene was one of dozens of horrific moments during the Hamas attack viewed by journalists, dignitaries and invited members of the South Florida community at the Israeli Consulate General’s office in Miami on Tuesday afternoon.
Among the gruesome scenes in the 47-minute compilation:
Terrorists whacking a dead man’s neck repeatedly with a hoe in a sloppy, but ultimately successful, effort to behead him.
A gunman cutting off a dead Israeli Defense Force soldier’s head with a knife in a matter of seconds.
Mangled bodies of young women who had been attending an electronic-music festival before the attack. They had been kidnapped, beaten and raped.
A medic arriving at the music festival walking over dozens of bodies yelling out for anyone to respond that they were alive. “Anyone, please?”
A dead toddler with bullet holes in her Mickey Mouse pajamas.
Those invited to see the footage were not permitted to film it or take photos while it was being shown.
‘EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THE FACE OF EVIL’
The Israeli Consulate General’s office wanted to show the footage in the wake of anti-Israel protests across the U.S., and as a reaction to a rise in antisemitic incidents worldwide — many triggered by Israel’s retaliation against Hamas.
As of Tuesday, more than 16,000 people had been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said, according to The Associated Press. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Around 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the Hamas attack.
“Everyone needs to see the face of evil and what we’re dealing with,” Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, consulate general of Israel’s mission in Miami, told the roughly 30 people gathered to view the footage.
The footage was gleaned from a variety of sources — the militants’ phones, phones taken from the victims and first responders’ body cameras. In all, viewers were shown the murder of 139 people during the Oct. 7 attack.
“This is just a portion of the horrors that the people of Israel went through on Oct. 7, the worst day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” said ElbazStarinsky.
Joe Gehr, a Miami security consultant and former officer with the Israel Defense Forces, said the footage should serve as a testament that Israel is fighting against religious extremists who are committed to killing Jews and anyone else who doesn’t subscribe to their beliefs.
“Their war, their jihad, is against the infidels, and the infidels are not only Jews and Israelis, it’s Christians, it’s even moderate Muslims, so anyone who is not radical enough in their faith,” Gehr said. “And, their message is clear, and I think we saw it with ISIS as well — you have two options, either you convert to a radical version of Islam or we cut your head off. And, they mean it. So, that’s what we saw today with these awful images.”
‘IT’S A VIDEO EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE’
Among those in attendance were several South Florida mayors, including Surfside’s Shlomo Danzinger. “We came out here, and we knew it would be difficult. But, I think that it’s important that we bear witness, because the only thing worse that could have happened after Oct. 7 would be for people to forget about it, for people not to talk about it, for the world to stay silent, which I think we’re seeing,” Danzinger said.
Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo said some of the footage that struck him most were clips of Hamas members laughing at the dead and wounded and taking selfies in the back of a pickup with hostages who were taken from the music festival and were stacked on top of each other, bloodied, in the bed of the truck.
“It’s sad they’re doing this in the name of God, but not any God that I can imagine,” Bovo said.
Bal Harbour Mayor Jeffrey Freimark said that as grotesque as the imagery was, more people should see it to understand how dangerous the situation in Israel is.
“It’s impossible to process. It’s a video everyone needs to see. The sheer evil. The sheer animalism, the barbarism that took place, words do not do it justice. What people are hearing does not do it justice,” Freimark said.
Mike Driquez, deputy consulate general in the Miami office, told the Miami Herald that the approaching Hanukkah and Christmas holidays, which both embrace light, remind him not to lose hope.
“A very small light can disperse a lot of darkness, and that is our role now, to spread this light, and to spread this truth, because this is something that has to be seen, to not forget what happened in Israel, and to legitimize what we are doing,” he said. “And also to understand that we are the ones who are supposed to spread the light against these atrocities and against these cowards.”