Live Footage Captures the Horrors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 Attack on Israel

About 70 people had gathered inside a small meeting hall in Atlanta on Jan. 23 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 Sutan-Dadon, Israel’s Consul General for the Southeastern United States who led the showing.

Ms. Sutan-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.

The footage comes from various sources, the sourcing noted periodically throughout it: Hamas social media postings, footage from body cams and mobile phones belonging to terrorists later killed or captured, community or home security camera footage, phone videos taken by victims, and video footage shot by first responders entering ravaged settings and getting their first glimpse of countless bodies.

One viewer said afterward it was the worst thing he’d ever seen, and most would silently agree. The only items on the conference tables were boxes of tissue.

An Israeli Defense Force officer was introduced as Major Shai, who supervised the video’s showing, said he’s had to watch it a dozen times, and it’s still hard.

“You do not want to see it more than once,” said Eric Robbins, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, which hosted the showing at its Selig Center in Midtown Atlanta.

The major noted that the video shows three waves of the attack.

In the first wave, the terrorists from the Gaza Strip breach the frontier, cutting fences and advancing to the target towns, villages, and kibbutzes.

In the second wave, they commit the attack, with its widespread atrocities.

In the third wave, Gaza civilians who followed them in, people not clad in the fatigues favored by the terrorists, loot and plunder the savaged communities.

‘Allah Akbar!’

(Editor’s Note: The following contains graphic descriptions of torture and other violence.)

The video contains hundreds of individual shots, some only a few seconds long, faster than an observer can take accurate notes.

There was total silence in the audience during the viewing; the only sound an Epoch Times reporter could hear was the scratching of his own pen as he took notes.

All of it is unedited, Maj. Shai said. It does contain closed-caption text in English of what’s being said and occasional titles establishing the location. What follows is a rough chronological account of what’s in the video:

From the very beginning, terrorists are shouting “Allah Akbar!” or “God is great!” even as they cut through the security fence at Israel’s border.

Silent footage taken from the dashcam of a victim’s car shows the car being shot at by terrorists standing along the road as the car drives by. The windshield cracks in a spiderweb pattern but doesn’t shatter.

The driver isn’t visible, but the car slowly starts to veer to the left, its driver apparently now dead or incapacitated, as it rolls without braking to collide with a parked car.

Terrorists shoot passengers in a small car.

They shoot people who are already down.

They shoot people in a small white car.

A terrorist can be heard shouting “Allah is great” on the recording of his car’s dash cam.

Murdered people can be seen lying in the street.

Terrorists check a car with dead people in it, ready to shoot them some more.

Bodies lie where they fell, one outside a car, one slumped over through an open door from the driver’s seat.

‘Why Am I Alive?’

At Kibbutz Be’eri, which lost more than 95 murdered residents and more than 30 taken hostage that day, terrorists near its gate kill people in a car that slows waiting for the gate to open.

A terrorist body cam records shouting at an ambulance.

Also, from a body cam, terrorists on foot at the kibbutz murder a dog, taking it down with one bullet and then pumping two or three more rounds into it.

They go into someone’s backyard and fire into the house. They advance onto the patio. The terrorist wearing the body cam can be heard breathing heavily. The footage shows one of his comrades setting the house on fire.

The terrorist fingers the blades on Venetian blinds to peer into the house. Another cuts a screen with Sept. 11-style box cutters. Music can be heard playing, perhaps from the home’s radio or television. They go into the house.

A title now locates the action at Netiv Ha’asara, a moshav or agricultural settlement near the frontier that lost more than 20 people murdered that day.

The view shifts to a home security camera. A father and two sons can be seen in their underwear in another room as they flee. They flee through a doorway off the patio, which appears to be to a garage or shed. A terrorist throws a hand grenade through the doorway.

A terrorist pulls the two boys out, and their father can be seen lying there, probably dead. They’re crying. One of them cries out, “Daddy! Daddy!” the Hebrew word for father, ‘abba,’ is audible. The other tells him, “Daddy’s dead,” as the terrorist hauls them into the house.

They’re now in the kitchen. A terrorist takes a bottle from the refrigerator and asks them, “Is this water?” having just murdered their father. He puts it back and takes another large bottle, red and perhaps a Coca-Cola bottle, drinks from it, and puts it back in the refrigerator.

The boys are bleeding and bruised but still ambulatory. One tries to convince his brother that, yes, their father is really dead. The footage shows them, now alone in the kitchen, one of them saying, “Why am I alive? Why am I alive?” They run outside and get away.

Different footage shows community security men bringing their mother onto the property. She collapses as she sees her husband’s body and has to be lifted and helped away by the security men.

‘They Cut Off Their Heads With Knives!’

A terrorist’s mobile phone shows firing outdoors.

Back at Kibbutz Be’eri, they shoot people in a car, pull them out, and steal the vehicle.

Security footage in a kindergarten shows a woman cowering inside an empty room, dimly lit inside. She’s on the ground, and firing can be heard outside the room. A terrorist outside shoots through the door. Her body changes position as the bullets impact. He and another go in to check if she’s dead. They pick her up and carry her out.

The video’s time signature shows it’s 9:57 a.m. The attack had started between 6:30 and 7 a.m.

From a Hamas radio transmission intercepted by Israel and attributed to “Commando Malek,” a voice is heard saying: “They cut off their heads with knives, cut off their heads! Praise Allah!”

On video footage, voices shout, “Kill the Jew! Give me a knife! Kill the Jew!” A man starts trying to chop off a victim’s head with a garden hoe or mattock. “Allah is great!” he shouts, chopping at the man again and again. “Alhamdulilaay!”

A pile of prone bodies is visible. Terrorists pump more bullets into them.

“He said, ‘Israel!’ What Israel?”

A car burns.

“Allah is great!”

A terrorist fires at a man on a bicycle and keeps firing into him after he’s dead.

Kidnapped people are led away and piled into a pickup truck.

The video shows trucks on the streets of Gaza.

A terrorist beats a body in the back of a pickup truck as civilians crowd around and shoot phone videos of him doing it.

Civilians kick a man who’s down in the street.

The scene shifts to a field. A car contains two dead bodies.

Then, there’s an image of a room with at least three dead bodies in it.

There are massive bloodstains in a house and a patio, where a bleeding person appears to have been dragged, leaving a long trail a meter or more wide.

Dead bodies lie in a pool of blood.

A dead dog, a burned body, and more dead bodies are visible.

A woman’s body lies in a laundry room. A man is so burned his face is no longer recognizable.

Close-ups of bodies with the faces blurred out. More victims’ bodies.

‘Let Me Speak To Mom!’

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