Thread by @JerryDunleavy

I was recently among those who was shown the roughly 45 minutes of raw footage of the October 7th terrorist massacre committed by Hamas. This will be a long thread, but I believe worth reading.

The brutal and evil footage was compiled by the Israeli government and shown by the Israeli embassy on Capitol Hill this week. The videos and photos came from GoPro body cameras, cell phones, CCTV cameras, and social media posts. Some of the videos were recorded by Hamas terrorists, and some were recorded by the victims themselves, with many of the videos put together in a sequential order or from the POV of both terrorist and victim during the commission of a specific series of atrocities.

The Israeli government said the 45 minute compilation was pulled together from hundreds of hours of images & videos, and so the footage was just “a glimpse of what happened that day.” No cell phones or recording devices were allowed in the room as the footage played, but I took pages of disturbing notes (I am a recovering journalist after all).

A constant theme from the footage is the celebratory and jubilant nature of the Hamas terrorists as they murder innocent Israelis, and their vocal belief that these murders were being carried out for Allah. Some of the most disturbing footage is from the Hamas massacre at the Re’im music festival and from the Hamas rampages at kibbutzim, as well as Hamas terrorists gunning down cars of civilians or people on foot who are trying to flee the massacres.

The footage shows a truck full of Hamas fighters driving through the Gaza barrier as they shout “Allahu Akbar!” Trucks and motorcycles speed into Israel with smiling Hamas terrorists carrying AK-47s, RPGs, and hand grenades.

The footage then shows Hamas shooting at cars and killing civilians on a long road. Trucks full of Hamas terrorists shoot at civilians in cars who are trying to escape, and Hamas terrorists standing in the road shoot at the cars too. Passengers are pulled from cars to make sure they’re dead, and injured passengers are executed. Bodies are strewn all across the road.

The footage then shifts to the kibbutzim communities and shows Hamas going home to home, shooting into houses, killing Israeli residents, shooting dogs, breaking into homes to search for civilians, and lighting homes ablaze as families hide inside. Women and children are killed while hiding under beds in fear.

In one piece of footage, a father runs out of a home trying to carry his two young sons to safety. Hamas discovers their hiding spot just outside the home and terrorist tosses a grenade at the family. You can see the explosion kills the father, but the two boys survive, although they are injured and bloodied. The two boys go back inside the home, and one of them appears to have been blinded in one eye by the blast. The boys cry out in despair, “Dad’s dead! It’s not a prank!” and “I want my mom. Mom!” and “Why am I alive?!” Later, the mother arrives outside the home with Israeli village security and sees her dead husband. She screams in anguish and village security pulls her away from the deadly scene.

The footage also shows Hamas hunting for civilians inside a kindergarten, shooting through walls as a woman lays on the ground hiding in a room.

The footage then includes what the Israeli government says are intercepted Hamas radio communications. The discussions between Hamas fighters and commanders are ecstatic. “They cut off their heads with knives and shot them in the head.” A Hamas commander recommends bringing the heads back to Gaza: “Let them play with their heads on the ground.”

The footage also includes a scene where Hamas terrorists repeatedly attempt to decapitate a dead civilian with what appears to be a garden hoe. The Hamas terrorist swings the hoe down on the dead civilian’s neck repeatedly, but is only partially successful with the decapitation effort (though not for lack of trying). The accompanying yelling from Hamas terrorists includes, “Jew sonofabitch!” and “Film it! Film it!” and “Allahu Akbar!”

The footage then moves on to clips of Hamas firing bullets into the bodies of piles of civilians, and more clips of burning homes and burning cars. Hamas fires bullets into the heads of anyone who might have survived.

The footage then shows Hamas taking people hostage, and crowds in Gaza celebrating as Hamas terrorists return in trucks filled with hostages. The footage also shows crowds beating bodies (at least some of them dead) in the trucks and a crowd kicking and stomping on a dead body.

The footage then proceeds to clips of people killed in their bedrooms, massive pools of blood, a person’s head that had been detached from their body and blown in half, children burned to death, and the bodies of babies & toddlers who were killed.

A phone call by a Hamas terrorist records him calling his mother and father to brag about murdering Israelis. “Look how I killed them!” “Dad, look at WhatsApp and see how many I killed!” “I killed more than ten Jews with my bare hands!” “Mom, your son is a hero!”

The footage also shows a large group of civilians of various ages who were murdered at what appears to be a bus stop.

The footage then shows a series of clips of a group of young women in hiding as Hamas searches for civilians to capture or kill. Their fear is palpable. Some of the women are beaten and bloodied and tied up, and some of the girls are taken hostage. The footage shows crowds in Gaza celebrating female hostages being captured, and cheering as a female hostage with bloody pants is shoved into a truck.

The footage also shows Hamas terrorists shooting women as they hide and shooting the bodies of women to make sure they are dead.

An intercepted radio communication from Hamas speaks of an Israeli who was killed, “He’s dead. Bring him and hang him in al-Alam Square” inside Gaza.

The footage then shows videos of Hamas terrorists stomping on the bodies of dead IDF soldiers. One Hamas terrorist uses a knife to saw off and decapitate the head of a killed IDF soldier, ripping the soldier’s head off of his neck as a trophy. There is also a video of a crowd stomping on a dead IDF soldier.

The footage then moves back to the massacre at the music festival near the Israeli border with Gaza. The footage shows a huge crowd fleeing the Hamas terrorists. The terrorists approach and systematically fire bullets into potential hiding spots. Footage from music festival goers shows them hiding as Hamas hunts for them. Footage then shows the bloody evidence of civilians who had been shot while hiding in port-a-potties.

The footage shows more videos of Hamas shooting at the crowds as they flee and shooting people as they hide. There are dead bodies, some seeming to be on fire, laying in the street. The footage shows civilians murdered in large piles in hiding spots, killed by bullets fired and grenades thrown by Hamas. One man hiding behind a car escapes the detection of one Hamas terrorist, but is casually executed by another when he is spotted.

The footage then shows Hamas loading bloodied and injured hostages into trucks, including one hostage whose arm has been blown off into a bloody stump. The Hamas terrorists film themselves celebrating and declaring themselves “heroes” and taking video selfies with the injured hostages as they drive quickly back to Gaza.

The footage also shows a female hostage in the back of a truck who is mostly undressed and appears to be dead, given the nearly impossible contortion of her body. A crowd in Gaza celebrates and at least one person spits on her body.

The footage returns to the aftermath of the music festival slaughter. The music festival is strewn with dozens of dead bodies. A first responder searching for any survivors yells out in desperation, “Can anyone give us a sign of life? Anyone, please?!” The dozens of festival goers all appear dead.

The footage then proceeds into something of a horror show montage. Charred dead bodies in a burnt out car. More charred dead bodies at the base of some trees near the road. Some dead bodies found bound and gagged. Some bodies charred beyond all recognition. Toddlers and babies killed in gruesome fashion. Civilians burned down to their skeletons. Half of a head blasted and charred down to the skull.

One image that will particularly stick out to me from this montage is that of a woman who was killed and partially burnt to a crisp. Survivors who think she might be a friend of theirs are in despair as they try to identify her. She is laying on her back with her hand permanently frozen in an apparent attempt to shield her face.

At the end of the 45 minute video, the Israeli government said the footage showed the murder and/or the bodies of 139 victims — or roughly just 10% of the death toll from the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.

In terms of understanding the October 7th terrorist attack on a more visceral level, I would (perhaps not perfectly) compare it to understanding the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of 9/11. It’s one thing to hear that 3,000 people have been killed or even to see the videos of the planes striking the towers or the towers collapsing — it’s another to have seen the videos of people having to choose between suffocating/burning to death or leaping to their deaths and seeing them choose the latter and plummet to the distant ground below. Same goes with the October 7th videos — the more than 1,000 murders by Hamas terrorists were not just data points, but were innocent people who were killed in brutal and up-close-and-personal and vicious ways.