That morning, I had attended a screening for the media in Seattle of the October 7th massacre footage that was taken by Hamas. The terrorists live streamed and recorded the atrocities they committed against human beings, and it didn't matter if they were Jewish, it didn't matter who they were, it was that they were in Israel, because some of them weren't even Israeli.
There are a few moments from that 47 minutes of footage that was taken from closed circuit TV cameras, from the Hamas body cameras that they were wearing, from the clips they put on the internet.
If you've been following the situation in Israel on social media, you've probably seen about a third of the footage already.
Some of the worst stuff you haven't seen yet.
Towards the beginning of the footage, there's a dad and his boys. Kids, probably 13, 10 years old.
They're all in their underwear, probably because they don't have air conditioning, and it's hot, and that's what they were sleeping in, and they got woken up by this attack because it happened first thing in the morning.
As the father is trying to hide his boys, he hears the terrorists come into the house and he quickly grabs his boys and rushes them outside. I think what he rushes them out into is a Sukkah because it was the last day of the holiday of Sukkot in Israel, where Jews dwell in portable huts for 8 days.
He rushed the boys into the structure and they disappeared from view. You just see the doorway to the structure and you see a Hamas terrorist throw in a grenade after them.
You see the explosion and then you see the father's body fall to the ground in the doorway.
I assume he used himself as a human shield because, a few seconds later, you see the boys come out. And they're bloody but they're alive. The father is clearly dead and the children are freaking out. These two kids just watched their father murdered by terrorists.
One of them is crying over and over, “Why am I alive? Why am I alive?”
He looks at his brother and he realizes his brother's missing an eye. You see the blackness over the eye and he asks “Can you see out of that eye?"
"No, I can't see out of that eye.”
A terrorist walks into the room and heads for the refrigerator, looks for something to drink, grabs a Coke, and just starts chugging out of the bottle with these kids breaking down in front of him.
And then you, the viewer, don't know what happened to those boys. Were they kidnapped? Were they killed later?
The scene cuts to later when the mother comes back with Israeli soldiers to find her husband dead and her boys missing.
That scene stuck with me because I've got two boys and I started thinking to myself, would I have been brave enough to take the grenade?
Every parent says yes, but we know that's not necessarily true. Would I have been brave enough to take the grenade to save my sons? What if my son saw me there like that, like that dad?
The second video that stuck with me was a person who is barely alive on the ground and one of the terrorists grabs a garden hoe and as he's yelling with glee, “Allahu Akbar,” he starts hitting the person, who's barely alive, in the neck with the tool over and over again while praising his god.
Calling these Hamas terrorists 'animals' is an insult to animals. They are the lowest form of life, the lowest form of creation. They were euphoric, giddy, celebrating butchering human beings.
There's a clip you may have seen on the web where one of the Hamas terrorists took one of his victim's cell phones to call his parents and brag about killing 10 Jews. The parents are celebrating with him.
There's another scene where two dead Israeli soldiers are lying on the ground. One of the terrorists grabs a knife and beheads one of the soldiers, sawing through the neck to take the head, still in its helmet, likely as a trophy.
No horror movie can do any of this justice.
There is another scene, which reminded me of the movie 'Titanic', where one of the White Star Line crew members is calling out for survivors as his crewmates row a lifeboat through a debris field of frozen corpses.
There's a scene when the IDF finally arrives at what’s left of the Nova Music Festival, and they come across a large concession stand. The viewer can see the beer kegs and the Coca-Cola logo on fridges like you would see at any festival but the floor is littered with bodies, people who were likely hiding in the concession stand, hoping nobody would see them.
The entire floor is covered. Soldiers call out “Tain li siman l’chayim (give me a sign of life)” over and over again but no one responds.
You see the aftermath of some of the beheadings. You see the aftermath of some of the rapes.
This is the most graphic thing I've ever seen in my entire life and there are people out there who are saying it never happened, who are saying “No, it's all a lie,” or falsely accusing the Israeli army of committing the atrocities or the debunked conspiracy that Israeli helicopters did it.
The people who would say such things don't want to let in a different narrative that might conflict with whatever they want to believe, what they have convinced themselves of to excuse these barbarians, these savages from their actions.
We cannot share a planet with them. They must be eradicated from the earth and sent to the dustbin of history. No ceasefire, no stopping, until Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and all other terrorist groups are wiped off the face of the earth.
The people who are marching in the streets and on our college campuses supporting these monsters are either so ignorant that they don't know what they're doing, or they know damn well what they're doing, supporting the worst humanity has seen in generations. Either way, by doing so, they are emboldening and enabling all of this.
I saw a clip last night of Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) walking through the halls of Congress when he is confronted by one of these Code Pink activists demanding a ceasefire.
Rubio had the opportunity to view the footage earlier this month. He told the activist, “Are you filming it? I want you guys to get this.”
He said that he wanted Israel “…to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals who did horrifying crimes and I hope you guys post that because that's my position. Hamas should stop hiding behind civilians, putting civilians in the way. Hamas knew that this was going to lead to this. Hamas should stop building their military installations underneath hospitals, underneath civilians.”
When the activist claims Rubio doesn’t care about the civilian casualties in Gaza, Rubio responded, “Absolutely I do. I care, I think it's horrifying. I think it's terrible. And I think Hamas is 100 percent to blame,” adding, “Make sure you post that please.”
After the screening this morning, the people in the room were acting like they were leaving a funeral. Nobody knew what to say, nobody knew how to act, nobody knew what to do.
I helped organize the screening and I know which ones told me they couldn’t handle it and I don't bear them any ill will. I even told some of them not to go. I didn’t want to go, but I remembered the Holocaust survivors who told me as a child to tell their story when they were gone. Here I was being asked to do the same again.
I also know which ones were invited and should have been there and weren’t. I know which outlets, for whatever reason, didn't want their reporters to see it.
Most of our local mainstream media, some of our “most trusted names in news,” were too cowardly to even respond to the invite. Many of them ghosted the organizers.
I’ve had people say to me “In the 1940s, I would have hid you in my attic…I would have saved you.”
Whatever you are doing now is what you would have been doing in the 1930s and 40s. If you are defending life, you would have been doing so in the 1930s and 40s.
And the people out in the streets rallying for Hamas would have been the ones rounding up Jews. The few Jews who are joining Hamas supporters in the streets would have been the ones turning in their friends, turning in their people who go to synagogue with them.
Whatever you are doing now is what you would have been doing in the 1930s and 40s.
