PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Adults and children being burned alive. Assailants throwing grenades in bomb shelters. Gunmen opening fire at passersby. Dead bodies soaking in blood in their beds. Terrorists laughing.
For nearly an hour, members of the media and other community groups watched a compilation of raw footage of the atrocities carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 in Israel. They attended a private screening at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Old City Thursday night. The videos are only being shown to select groups — including media, business and community leaders, and elected officials — due to the extremely graphic content, but also with the intention to bear witness to the rampage and accurately share the details of that day.
The videos were taken on GoPros and body cameras worn by Hamas terrorists, CCTV and security cameras, dashboard vehicle cameras, and personal cellphones of civilians and Hamas members. Attendees at the screening were asked to forfeit their phones and sign a waiver before entering.
Officials said they feel the need to show the footage of what was done to more than 1,400 civilians in Israel because some people still don’t believe the depravity of Hamas’ atrocities. Nearly 250 civilians are still being held hostage in Gaza. Just as many people were killed on Oct. 7 at a music festival, not far from the Gaza border, where terrorists stormed the area and opened fire. About 100 people were killed at a nearby kibbutz.
President Joe Biden has condemned the attack as the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Tsach Saar, deputy consul general of Israel in New York, said the videos are so graphic that a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces had to personally bring the file from Israel, so as to prevent it from being widely distributed.
“We have to be very sensitive about it because of the families, because this is raw footage,” he said. “It’s not easy for people to watch. People have to understand in advance what they’re going to see.”
Saar said it didn’t go unnoticed that the screening was held on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, during which Nazis in Germany killed Jews and vandalized thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues.
“We’re seeing denial — like, Holocaust denial,” Saar added.
Some of the people in attendance could barely speak after the screening.
“It’s images that you couldn’t even imagine seeing in the most disgusting gore-filled horror film,” said Jason Holtzman, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
“It leaves you completely shattered,” he said. “It makes you wonder how so many people on the streets of America today can be shouting that what happened on Oct. 7 was some type of legitimate form of resistance.”
Ryan Harris with the organization Culture Changing Christians was shocked to see the brutality and the dead bodies. He said the atrocities of Oct. 7 should be more widely known.
“The ruthlessness and a disregard for the youth, that was tough [to watch],” he said. “It’s sensitive, but people need to see it.”
“Which is worse,” asked attendee Devorah Treatman, “having your entire family just wiped out, or having to live the rest of your life with this horror and with this trauma?”
She said the terrorists’ disposition was equally frightening.
“These young men who are just so gleeful, they’re coming in and they’re cheering,” she said. “They’re acting like frat bros.”
“We know that innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza are suffering,” Holtzman added. “They’re suffering at the same enemy that Israel is fighting.”
More than a month later, that fight is relentlessly carrying on, with thousands of civilian casualties in its wake. Israel agreed this week to humanitarian pauses — four hours each day — to allow civilians in Gaza to flee. As of Friday morning, officials cited the Palestinian death toll in Gaza as more than 11,000.
For Palestinians in the Philadelphia region, getting reports about the ongoing death and destruction has been a nightmare.
“What happened on Oct. 7 was not good, it was a tragedy. What is happening now is way beyond a tragedy. It’s genocide,” said Sam Kuttab, a Christian Palestinian-American from Cheltenham.
Each day, Kuttab parks his pickup truck on Broad Street on Temple University’s campus with a large digital billboard hitched to the back that shows images from Gaza — smashed domes of mosques, bloodied children, and the growing count of the dead.
He’s one of hundreds of thousands across the globe calling for a cease-fire, particularly over fears for his family. Kuttab has lost family members in the war. His brother, a journalist in Gaza, told him two of their cousins are dead. Two others, both elderly, are missing.
“I am hoping they will see the humanity of it,” he said. “I want them to understand that these numbers represent people. As tragic and horrific as the 1,400 was in your eyes, 10,000 should be the same.”
Nearly two dozen hospitals in the Gaza Strip are no longer operational — either out of fuel or completely destroyed. Dozens more ambulances were wrecked. Roads have turned to rubble. Some apartment buildings were obliterated, leaving behind debris-filed holes in the ground.
“When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you know what they say in Gaza right now? ‘I will not be growing up. I expect to die,’” said Osama Al Qasem, a volunteer with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
He hopes the council’s efforts to erect highway billboards will increase awareness and lead to more calls to end the war — something he believes was actually provoked earlier this year.
Nearly 240 Palestinians were killed in 2023 before Hamas’ attacks on Israel, according to the United Nations.
“On Oct. 7, I was surprised by the attack, but I expected it,” Qasem admitted. “Deep down, I expected it.”