The Israeli government has been showing groups of journalists unedited images of the October 7 massacre for several weeks. The recordings total hundreds of hours, of which a 45-minute selection is shown.
Israeli authorities explain that they were captured by cameras worn by the Hamas terrorists who participated in the attack. They were GoPro type cameras on the chest, head or dashboard of the vehicles. The images have also been taken from mobile phones, traffic and surveillance cameras.
They cannot be shown in public to preserve the dignity of the victims, but the Israeli Government believes it is necessary to disseminate them privately to reaffirm that it is fighting against a terrorist group “worse than the Islamic State” and that the crimes of October 7 were not war crimes but against humanity. That day, the worst for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, 300 military personnel died, 900 civilians, including children, women and the elderly, all murdered in cold blood, many in the cruelest way possible. Some were executed with their hands tied behind their backs. There were decapitated and charred bodies.
The terrorists let a father and his two young children into the shelter next to their house before throwing a grenade inside. The father covered his children and died in a burst state. The terrorists made the kids pass over his body. They were hurt, they cried, they screamed and they locked them in a kitchen. A terrorist opened the refrigerator and grabbed a Coca-Cola while the bloodied children cried out for their father. One of them shouted: “Why am I alive?”
One guerrilla cut a soldier’s neck with a knife, another tried to decapitate a man with a hoe. One more phoned his home in Gaza with the cell phone of an Israeli victim to tell his mother that he was a hero because he had killed ten Jews with his bare hands. “Mom, your son is a hero,” he said about her mother’s crying, which she couldn’t answer.
The terrorists accompanied their crimes with the phrase “God is greatest,” a profession of faith that Muslims recite on many occasions. Above all, it is a celebration of life, a show of gratitude when they achieve something that would have been impossible without divine mediation. The terrorists shouted “God is the greatest” when they took selfies, smiling, very happy, surrounded by corpses of Israelis whom they called dogs.
The killing was indiscriminate and by chance there was also the capture of hostages, who arrived in Gaza amid great expectation. People were milling around the vans in which they were piled up, some seriously injured. Some corpses were displayed on the pavement, which the crowd kicked and recorded with their cell phones.
The euphoria spread as more dead people appeared, disfigured bodies, with their mouths and eyes wide open. The horror of dehumanization was a source of joy.
