Tel Aviv, Israel — I didn’t write in detail about the 43-minute-long video of Hamas atrocities after watching it last year in September. I wasn’t sure if people needed to, or should, read such an account. But I viewed the video for a second time at an Israel Defense Forces base in Israel this week — an experience that only reinforced for me, as I hope an account of it may do for you, that the people who defend Hamas’s supposed “right” to overthrow the “Israeli apartheid” by “any means necessary” are either evil, or deluded, or both.
In one scene, Hamas terrorists hacked at an IDF soldier’s head with a blunt knife. You knew it was an IDF soldier, because of the uniform and helmet. You knew it was a blunt knife, because it took the terrorist multiple tries to sever the man’s head from his body. Hack is the right word here — no slicing, no clean cuts, no mercy. More than ten times, the terrorist hacked into the soldier’s neck before succeeding, at which point he whipped around the soldier’s helmet, a detached head still lodged inside, with glee.
In another scene, an Israeli man lay on the ground, bloodied, but he didn’t yet appear dead. A terrorist slammed down a garden hoe on his chest, presumably missing the intended target of the slain man’s neck. I looked away the third time the terrorist crashed the garden hoe into the man’s chest.
Footage from the phones of festival-goers played; in it, you can see groups hiding together in portable bathrooms, or behind barrels. Then, the video cuts to footage shot by first responders, of bodies slumped in those same hiding spots, or of bullet-holes and blood lining portable restrooms. A first responder cried out desperately for survivors, as he walked through the sea of dead bodies. Some died embracing those around them.
There were images of dead children and burned families. There was a video of a terrorist shooting a dog dead. There was a video of two young brothers witnessing Hamas murder their father with a grenade — after which, one brother wailed in agony, “Why am I alive?”
Some Hamas members tried to temper their terrorist buddies who wanted to mutilate victims by saying, “Stop, he’s already dead.” The same terrorists who, it seemed, could reason that beheading a dead man was wrong also reasoned that every action leading up to his death was right.
The most recent version of the video is 48 minutes. Five minutes of footage has been added since last year, as the IDF collects more electronic devices from Gaza and from victims. Younger Israeli soldiers aren’t allowed to watch the video, I learned. To watch bloodthirsty terrorists slaughter fellow service members could prompt anger, fear, or sadness, emotions that are likely counterproductive on the battlefield. Soldiers also witness Hamas’s evil regularly — in Gaza, for example, where terrorists still hide among civilians and pilfer humanitarian aid.