2023-11-05 13:17:12
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of atrocities.
The home of a family in Be’eri, a ‘kibbutz’ (Israeli agrarian communes) in the south of Israel, is equipped with standard security cameras to protect once morest intruders. One camera shows the kitchen, another the terrace and a third the path that leads to the building next door.
Cameras capture how a Hamas terrorist shoots and kills the father of a family following trying to hide his six- and eight-year-old children. The terrorists discover the children, dressed only in underwear. The next image shows the kitchen, where one of the children is sitting crying. The camera also records his words when he tells his brother in Hebrew: “dad is dead, dad is dead.” He then adds: “why am I still alive?” The younger of the two sits hunched over the table and says that he can’t see with one eye. The terrorists have mutilated it.
Then a Hamas terrorist comes in, takes what looks like a soft drink from the refrigerator, and drinks it. The latest images show her mother breaking down following discovering the body of her husband on the path leading from the terrace.
“Raw images”
The sequence is just a few seconds of the 40 minutes of videos that the Israeli embassy in Berlin invited around twenty journalists to see last Thursday. According to one narrator, there are several hundred minutes of video documenting the massacre that Hamas carried out on October 7: The images were taken from surveillance cameras, the victims’ cell phones and social networks; as well as in the vehicle cameras, body cameras and cell phones of the terrorists. Some images were recorded by Israeli security forces, the first to arrive at several locations following the attack.
The resulting compilation, seen by DW in Berlin, was also shown to journalists in Israel, New York and London under the title: “October 7, Hamas massacre, raw footage collected.”
An Israeli soldier walks through the destruction caused by the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel.Image: Amir Cohen/REUTERS
Protect the privacy of victims
The screenings are carried out under very strict rules: no photographs, videos or audio recordings are allowed, according to the wishes of the victims’ families, who agreed to have the images shown.
Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, sits in the second row. Before starting the screening, he tells those present that he too will see the images for the first time. Quietly, Prosor says it’s important to do so because “some people don’t believe it really happened.” Some Israeli embassy staff are also in the room, sitting behind the media representatives. They barely speak and their faces express complete dismay.
Charred bodies, abused babies
Some recordings stop abruptly. It seems as if some family members have reached the threshold of pain to continue showing what happened. The rest of the images remain under lock and key as part of an ongoing investigation, according to Olga Poliakov, military attaché at the embassy in Berlin. After the screening, she confirms that the Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Be’eri had indeed stabbed the young man’s eye. She says it is still unclear whether the mother and her two children survived.
The images show that the terrorists burned the bodies of their victims, corpses of babies with their faces disfigured. The terrorists’ body cameras show how they located the kibbutz residents and shot them dead. The screening room is silent during the screening and remains that way until long following the film ends. The images far exceed what even journalists with years of experience in conflicts, wars, death and violence are used to seeing.
general.advertisement.ad_label
Terror at the Supernova festival
The film also includes footage of the attack on the Supernova music festival in the Negev desert. Some of the images were posted on social media, but the added context of never-before-seen images from the victims’ cell phones leaves an even more gruesome impression. Beyond the footage of people fleeing through the fields surrounding the festival site, we also see pure terror: concertgoers dressed in white trying to hide behind a wall. But it is barely possible to hide from terrorists who seem to be everywhere.
Also shown is the well-known video of the German-Israeli Shani Louk, motionless and with her legs bent on one of the terrorists’ vans, following she was kidnapped at the festival site. In this recording you can clearly see that the young woman is bleeding profusely from a head wound. It seems unlikely that anyone might live long with such severe bleeding. His death was confirmed later.
Then there is another image, designed to provide perspective: 138 bodies lie scattered in and around a white tent where participants danced before being slaughtered. One hundred and thirty-eight dead, as the words on the screen convey: “less than 10% of the more than 1,400 people Hamas terrorists murdered on October 7.”
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor.Image: DW
Hamas recording: “Mom, I have killed more than ten!”
And the perpetrators? The Israeli Army claims to have intercepted communications in which terrorist commanders in the Gaza Strip They were ordered to film themselves killing Israelis. In one recording, a Hamas terrorist shouts into his phone: “Mom, I have killed more than ten! Mom, your son is a hero!” A response can be heard: “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
The terrorists’ cell phones also show videos of smiling and laughing young people (many of them under 30 years old) as they celebrate in front of the corpses of their victims.
After just under an hour, the lights come back on in the screening room of the Israeli embassy in Berlin. The audience remains silent for several minutes. A press conference or a debate with press representatives is not even considered. Only a handful of questions are asked.
When asked how he interpreted the use of body cameras by Hamas terrorists, Ambassador Prosor said the Islamists wanted to “show what they had done.” Israel has declared war on Hamas, and this is also a war of images. The more time passes, Prosor says, “the more these images will be forgotten.” Images like those of the six- and eight-year-old children of Kibbutz Be’eri, who watch their father being shot dead and wonder: “why am I still alive?”
(lgc/ju)
1699195772
#Israel #collects #shows #videos #Hamas #attacks
