A home surveillance camera shows a father picking up his two young sons to run to their outdoor bomb shelter. The three of them have just woken up from their beds and are all still in their underwear.
Shortly after they reach supposed safety, a hand appears on the screen and throws a grenade at the family. The father dies and the boys leave the house, covered in blood.
“Dad’s dead, it wasn’t a prank,” one says as they run back into their house. “I know, I saw it,” his brother replies, later shouting, “Why am I alive?”
In a second segment, captured through a call recording application on a victim’s phone, another son addresses another father. “Dad, I killed ten with my bare hands,” the terrorist excitedly tells his father in Gaza. “Your blood is on my hands, let me talk to mom.”
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“Please be proud of me, Dad,” he adds.
The terrorist, identified by his father as Mahmoud, says he is calling his family from the phone of a Jewish woman he just murdered and begging them to check his WhatsApp messages for further documentation.
These two vignettes were taken in two Israeli communities near the Gaza border that were devastated by Hamas in its October 7 attack. The attack killed more than 1,400 people in Israel and at least 224 others were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, the Israeli government showed around 200 members of the foreign press 44 minutes of shocking scenes of murder and mayhem. She said she decided to show journalists some of her collected documentation to dispel what a spokesman described as “a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon in real time” as doubts arise around the world about some of the most horrific atrocities Hamas.
Journalists were not allowed to record the demonstration, which took place at a closed military base.
Screenshot of Hamas bodycam footage as terrorists fire at an Israeli vehicle during the terrorist organization’s attack in southern Israel on October 7, released by the IDF and the GPO. (screenshot)
The footage was collected from call recordings, security cameras, body cameras of Hamas terrorists, dashboard cameras of victims, social media accounts of Hamas and victims, and cell phone videos of terrorists, victims and first responders.
In two videos, Hamas terrorists in IDF uniforms are seen stopping cars and then shooting their occupants.
Bodies are dragged from vehicles and left in the middle of the street after terrorists ransacked their belongings and, in some cases, stole the blood-soaked, bullet-riddled cars.
In another video, first responders are seen pouring water bottles over still-smoldering bodies in the hope of putting out the remaining embers.
In another case, a man writhes on the ground, bleeding from his stomach, as a terrorist repeatedly attempts to behead him with farm equipment. The man appears to be a Southeast Asian, possibly one of Israel’s foreign agricultural workers.
In another clip, a woman tries to decide whether a partially burned corpse is her family member because the dead woman’s head is mutilated. The dead woman’s dress is pulled up to her waist and her underwear is removed.
Maj. Gen. Mickey Edelstein, who briefed reporters after the tour, said that “we have evidence” of rape but that “we are not allowed to share it” and declined to elaborate.
The military also obtained footage from Gaza that was uploaded to social media on the day of the attack. In one video, a bloodied IDF soldier is pulled from a car, thrown to the ground and lynched by a Palestinian crowd on site. In another case, a young girl – a 19-year-old soldier, according to Israeli media – wears bloody sweatpants as she is dragged from the trunk of a car amid loud cheers. A man shouts in English: “You are in Gaza!”
IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari announces that Israel is at war following a deadly mass Hamas infiltration from Gaza on October 7, 2023. (IDF spokesman)
Still images in the raw footage included a decapitated soldier, several charred human remains, including those of young children, a pile of bodies in a bomb shelter and several Islamic State flags that the military said were found in Israel.
Speaking to the press, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that since October 7, Israel has equated Hamas with the Islamic State (or ISIS), primarily because of the Gaza-based terrorist group’s methods.
“If we say Hamas is ISIS, that’s not brand building,” Hagari said.
“We say ISIS in the sense of – [Hamas’s] Media elements, cruelty and barbarity are ISIS elements,” he said. He also pointed to “the evidence of manuscripts” found among killed and captured Hamas terrorists, whose main force came from the group’s Nukhba commando unit.
“It’s this idea that they would take any action, [even] against Islam, not allowing the existence of Israelis wherever they are, [including] Bedouins, Arab Israelis, foreigners,” Hagari said.
“Why would anyone take a GoPro? [to such an attack]“The military spokesman continued. “Because he’s proud of what he does.”
“It is indoctrination, and if indoctrination is used to commit crimes against humanity, then that is not just Israel’s problem,” Hagari added, alluding to a broader Western war against fundamentalist Islamic terror.