Photographs, films and eyewitness accounts of Jews being shot and toppled into mass graves, marched into gas chambers, loaded into cattle cars and starved to death in work camps provide irrefutable evidence of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Yet despite the carefully collected and preserved documentation, there are still those who vehemently deny the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews.
So, I have little hope the 44-minute film I watched Sunday night depicting the obscenities of Oct. 7 will silence claims the brutality is exaggerated or didn’t happen at all.
“Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre” was presented to a small group of Metro Detroiters by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Israeli Consulate to the Midwest. Much of the film was compiled from the cell phones and body cameras of the Hamas terrorists as they rampaged through Jewish settlements butchering civilians.
The footage is terrifyingly graphic. It is a reminder, as if we needed one, of the depths of inhumanity to which hatred can sink human beings.
What we saw Sunday night was excruciating to watch, harder still to discuss.
Hamas terrorists move through Israeli villages and along highways shooting down every Jew they see. The bloody victims are dragged out of their vehicles and homes and left lying in the street.
Terrorists invade houses and shoot Jews hiding under tables or frantically trying to find shelter from the bullets. Jews are burned alive. Dead Jewish soldiers are beheaded with hoes and knives. Jewish parents are killed, and their children left alone with their bodies.
More sickening for me than the gruesome images is the absolute joy with which the killers went about their sadistic work. I expected to see angry, frothing mad men. Instead, these killers are happy. They looked like gleeful young men celebrating a soccer win.
The murderers took enormous pride in their accomplishments. A terrorist calls his parents in the midst of his butchery to boast, “I killed 10 with my bare hands!” according to the translation provided. His voice is high-pitched with the excitement of a kid who scored the winning goal.
And this, I’m told, is the PG version. It doesn’t depict the mass rapes and mutilation of babies that was reported, but nothing in video suggests such depravity is beyond the pall for the marauders.
We have tried to draw a clear line between the Hamas terrorists and the Palestinian people, believing the citizens of Gaza are also victims of the terrorist group. This film blurs that line.
Gazans are seen dancing in the streets with the returning terrorists and spitting on the dead bodies brought into Gaza in the back of their pickup trucks.
Palestinians and their supporters dismiss the film as “atrocity propaganda.” It’s a flippant rejoinder that seeks to disconnect the horrors documented in this film from Israel’s purposeful campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas.
But the atrocities are why Israel is in Gaza, and why it can’t and won’t be deterred in its mission. The snake of fanatical jihadism must be killed, or it will strike again and again.
Reducing this conflict to both-sides-ism — Israel did this so Hamas is doing that — enables the overt expression of antisemitism that is growing here.
It’s why the presidents of America’s most elite universities sit before Congress and mouth absurdities about “context” when asked to condemn their students’ support for Hamas. It’s why our streets are filled with protesters urging the terrorists to “finish the job.” It’s why Jewish students and businesses are threatened instead of embraced.
I wondered going into the screening what emotions I’d feel coming out. Revulsion? Heartache? Grief?
All of that. But mostly rage, an absolute red-hot anger that there are people in this world capable of such evil and others who would excuse their wickedness.