[Note from DB: On our lawprof trip to Israel, we were offered the opportunity to watch a compilation of Hamas atrocities on October 7th. I declined. I saw just a bit of this footage back in October, and it was sufficiently searing that I did not want to revisit the experience, and I certainly needed no persuading that Hamas is a theocratic death cult that should be erased from the earth. But my colleague Adam Mossoff did watch the footage, and here is his report.]
On Day 3 (July 11) of the law professor mission to Israel, we had the opportunity to watch the 45-minute film of the Hamas atrocities on October 7 that was created primarily from the GoPro cameras worn by the Hamas soldiers, but also includes footage from security cameras and CCTV. During the attacks, the Hamas soldiers uploaded their GoPro videos to the internet and blasted them out on social media to hundreds of thousands of Israelis’ social media accounts on October 7. The IDF spokesperson unit spent two days taking thousands upon thousands of these videos down from the internet.
I will not describe or detail any of the film’s horrors, and so you can read this post knowing that you will not be ambushed with a nightmare that will haunt you for the rest of your days. I will say the film is horrific. In fact, it’s beyond horrific. But if one is to bear witness to evil so that one can better defend the good (Israel) and speak out against evil (genocidal antisemitism and supporters of this nihilism in the West), one must know the evil of which one speaks. Thus, I considered it important for me to see the film, but given the shocking and sickening content of this film, I don’t begrudge anyone not watching it.
Here’s some background context and general information about the film: The IDF created this film in November 2023 given worldwide denials of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Similar to the Holocaust denials that began in 1945 and continue to this day, the denial of the vile atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 began on October 8 and continue to this day. It’s not just denial of murders of children and babies and other war crimes as “Israeli propaganda.” There’s also the denial of the rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas soldiers on October 7, which has prompted Sheryl Sandberg to create her first documentary as her own act of bearing witness to October 7. It’s called, “Screams Before Silence,” and if you have not yet seen it, I recommend doing so (https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/).
Given its content, the film is closely controlled by the IDF. I already knew this from an opportunity I had last November to see it, which I declined at the time. One can only see the film through an application, a special invitation, or to be invited to a showing for specific audiences, such as political leaders or media industry representatives who have been invited to watch it. We saw it last week given that we were in Israel as a fact-finding mission about October 7. Before we saw it, we had to sign a special agreement not to share any images nor specific details that could be traced back to specific victims. We were also prohibited from having any electronic devices in the room and we had to store our phones in special lockers outside the room.
We later learned that not even all of the IDF spokespeople have seen it, as it has a security clearance rating of “need to know.” It appears that the primary reason for this extreme restriction on the film is the observance of the religious rules in Judaism and social norms in Israel about respecting the dignity of the deceased, which I described in my last post about October 7 and how Hamas deliberately sought to violate these rules and norms through explicit acts of desecration and destruction of its victims on October 7. Among those of us on the mission who were speaking with the IDF spokespeople about this, we were of one mind in telling them that Israel would be best served by releasing the film without restrictions, like documentaries about the Holocaust like “Night and Fog” that contain Nazi films of pits filled with bodies, as well as other scenes of body parts or death. Israel is in an existential war on multiple fronts right now, and in such emergency conditions, regular rules or norms that apply during normal life should be relaxed to accommodate the exigent circumstances.
As I mentioned, I won’t describe anything I saw in the film, but I would still like to share a few general observations about it. First, the pure glee expressed by the Hamas soldiers. Throughout the film, the Hamas soldiers are constantly shouting expressions of joy and excitement in what they are doing to their victims. They are not torturing or murdering out of necessity, nor is this the work of soldiers who are merely defending territory from an invasion. It was very clear from the first few moments of the film that they took pleasure in what they did. They celebrated it – during and after October 7. Many of us have seen the videos shared on the internet of civilians in Gaza who rushed to the trucks or SUVs to take pictures and beat the dead bodies or living hostages, shouting with glee and celebration. The Hamas soldiers were equally effusive and jubilant about the ghastly atrocities they deliberately committed on October 7 – and they proudly broadcast this by creating and sharing their GoPro videos with the whole world.
Second, the film of the GoPro videos makes it very clear that Hamas is a theocratic authoritarian regime in Gaza, not merely a dictatorship or a freestanding terrorist organization like Hezbollah or the Houthis. The Hamas soldiers expressed their glee and joy by constantly proclaiming “Glory to God!” (“Allah Ackbar!). One hears this more times than I could count, although I was frozen by the horrors of what I was witnessing and so I was not capable of counting at the time. Hamas is an authoritarian Islamic theocracy that rules over Gaza (it was elected into power when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2006 and then it took). Thus, Hamas is like Iran, the Taliban (Afghanistan), the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from 2011-2013, and ISIS in Syria and Iraq from 2014-2019. There have been non-ideological dictatorships in the Middle East, such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, but that is not Hamas.
This is important to understand and fully appreciate: October 7 was not about any grievances over land or alleged abuses by the Israeli government over the Palestinians. Hamas seeks the genocidal destruction of both Jews and Israel, just as its financial and military Iran, which is reported to have had a direct role in the planning and approval of the October 7 atrocities. This explains more than anything the atrocities and war crimes of October 7. Hamas is dedicated to the genocidal evil of the death of all Jews and the destruction of all of Israel.
Third, and last, the Palestinian culture considers dogs to be disgusting filth, and this is conveyed in the film as well. I had previously read articles and seen a few videos about how the many stray dogs in Gaza are viewed as nuisances and pests, and that Palestinians regularly kill or torture these dogs. They kill or torture dogs because they view dogs as not even befitting any respect for life. One does not have to be a “dog person” like I am to think this is deeply disturbing. There is valid reason for the famous dictum that dogs are “man’s best friend.”
I say this because the Palestinian’s horrible view of dogs is on full display in the film of the GoPro videos made by the Hamas soldiers. The most common insult one hears in the film, it is a refrain that is second only to the shouts of “Allah Ackbar,” is the one that the Hamas soldiers constantly scream at the Jews they are shooting and slaughtering: “You are dogs!”
It is a well-known fact in human history that people who commit mass murder explicitly dehumanize the people they are killing. The Nazis did this, for example, by labeling Jews as rats, vermin, and as a subspecies separate from Aryan humans. Hamas now does it by labeling Jews as dogs, which may seem strange to someone in the West who is unaware of the rat-like status that dogs apparently have in Palestinian culture. (Another example of this is found in this video (https://x.com/LizaRosen0000/status/1811955884966203632…) of an interview with an old Palestinian woman who says, “Jews are dogs.”)
For all these reasons, the film is especially horrific and searing psychologically and emotionally. Hamas sent 3000 soldiers to invade Israel for the purpose of murder, torture, rape, and kidnapping of innocent people (about 1,450 babies, children, and adults). This fact is bad enough by itself, but these soldiers did not commit their war crimes dispassionately or out of a sense of military duty. They committed their atrocities willingly, happily, and with effusive expressions of glory. The film is a window into a human capacity for evil that I knew only in the abstract from my historical study of the Holocaust or the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, but, based on what I know, the Nazi or Khmer Rouge soldiers did not revel in and enthusiastically celebrate their murders and atrocities. The Hamas soldiers did.
When the film concluded, I was in psychological shock. I had been and continued to cry. My hands were shaking, and I felt almost physically numb. I also felt a sense of detachment from my body and my surroundings. I still vividly remember holding my right hand out flat in front of me and watching it tremble and shake, as if I had just over-exerted myself in a workout at the gym, despite my having sat still in an air-conditioned room for the past hour. After a break, we met with IDF lawyers and then continued the mission with lunch and more meetings with lawyers from NGOs and others, but it took me several hours to recover from the shock.
This was all a week ago, and the shock has long since worn off, but that film will be with me for the rest of my life. I hope that I can now use my writing and speaking skills as a professor and advocate to help in my own way by speaking truth to the vicious lies and propaganda of the pro-Hamas activists in the U.S. and the West. Let no one be mistaken what the slogans “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” truly mean, and what the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah that are now regularly flown at the protests in the U.S. and Europe mean. These all represent a pure and unadulterated nihilism that many of us in the West have a hard time fully understanding. This is not just antisemitism, and will not end with Jews or Israel. I hope the U.S. wakes up to this fact before its continuing appeasement of Iran results in Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, because after watching the film of the October 7 atrocities, I think I know what will happen when it does.
