Israel’s official 45-minute video, created from images shot during the butchery—including by the terrorists—depicts the stunning brutality of the massacre.
About 70 people had gathered inside a small meeting hall in Atlanta on Jan. 23, 2023 to watch a movie none of them was looking forward to seeing.
Israel put together an official video of the atrocities committed by Hamas in its Oct. 7 terrorist attack. More than 900 Israeli civilians and 300 soldiers were killed that day, and 240 more were taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
The attack triggered the Israel-Hamas war in that 141 square miles of territory, now in its fourth month.
Seeing the video is an invitation-only affair directed at journalists, community leaders, and other opinion-makers.
No recording is permitted, only handwritten notes. Viewers sign a statement promising not to record. They were asked not to use any names of victims present in the video.
Families of the victims portrayed—people who were dead, injured, raped, kidnapped, mutilated, or abused, often more than one of those—signed releases allowing the government to use the video footage, according to Anat Sultan-Dadon, Israel’s Consul General for the Southeastern United States who led the showing.
Ms. Sultan-Dadon told The Epoch Times those releases specified closed showings only.
She suggested, though, that the feelings in Israel immediately after the attack have now changed, especially as thousands of pro-Hamas demonstrators marching and rioting around the world suggest falsely that the atrocities didn’t happen, that the footage was faked, and focusing attention on the war in Gaza, instead of what started it.
More families want the footage to be seen, she said. Filmmakers are now at work in Israel making documentaries about Oct. 7.
“We think that it is imperative for the world to know what occurred on Oct. 7,” she told The Epoch Times. “Especially in the face of denials and intentional disinformation that is being spread.”
“It’s important to bear witness, for the viewers of this film. Atrocities and crimes against humanity were committed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7,” she said.
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