In an auditorium at an Israeli military base north of Tel Aviv on Monday, I joined dozens of foreign journalists who were shown 43 minutes of graphic, gruesome footage and photographs that the Israel Defense Forces said were made during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Some of the images had circulated online before, in some cases in truncated and edited form, but most of what we saw was unedited and very disturbing.
The IDF said it compiled the images from militants’ body cameras, victims’ dash cams and cellphones, security cameras at kibbutzim, and other sources. The IDF decided to share them, international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told me, as part of his country’s “narrative battle.” It comes as international criticism mounts over civilian casualties in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“We understand that there’s a narrative battle here and that we have to show the world what happened here,” Hecht said. “We’re doing everything we can to show the media that there’s a reason why we’re doing what we’re doing. [Hamas] started this in the most heinous way.”
We were not allowed to record the images played for us by the IDF — we were told, out of respect for grieving families. The Hamas militants who launched the surprise attack on Israel operated on a much different policy, filming and livestreaming parts of their murderous rampage with body or helmet cameras.
Not all of the material could be independently verified by the news media. This is some of what we were shown: In an auditorium
Hamas militants lobbing a grenade into what appears to be a home bomb shelter, killing a father before he could slam the door shut. His young sons, wearing only their underwear, were splattered with blood but survived. In another clip, the boys are in their kitchen, crying out for their mother, as one attacker pulls a Coca-Cola from their refrigerator and takes a leisurely sip. The younger brother says he can’t see out of one eye and asks, “Why am I alive?”