Hamas horrors you luckily won’t see — glimpse of terror too sick for Israel to air

What does one wear to a massacre?

That was the bizarre question that came into my head as I prepared — and braced myself — to visit the Israeli Consulate in New York late Friday morning to watch 45 minutes of the hundreds of hours of footage collected from Hamas’ Oct. 7 bloodbath in southern Israel.

I had some idea of the horrors I’d see, of course.

Photographs and videos showing the results of the terrorist rampage have streamed out of Israel and the Gaza Strip for weeks — some even as it was taking place.

Dead terrorists had on them written orders that included directions for operating GoPro cameras to capture their evil escapades and sometimes broadcast them in real time on social media. 

Hamas and its Iranian masters wanted the dirty deeds documented. They aimed to terrorize an entire nation and beyond by showing just what they’re capable of.

And they sought to inspire their fellow travelers to follow suit in intensifying the jihad. 

Yet some people still say they don’t believe such things happened — with doubters found in the most educated, elite sectors of society. 

Hence Friday’s special event.

I used to be a movie critic, and I can tell you the mood at this screening was unlike any other.

None of us wanted to see such sights. But none of us would give up the opportunity. The world needs to know what happened as even “reputable” news organizations refuse to tell the truth about that gruesome day.

Journalists, about 20 of us, had to leave our cellphones and Apple Watches at the door. Some of the footage had never been released, and Israeli authorities had their reasons for showing it only to reporters and some select others — like President Biden. They’re concerned about the feelings of the families involved, of course.

They also don’t want such horror and humiliation broadcast worldwide: “We have values,” as retired major general and reservist Mickey Edelstein declared in a Zoom briefing from Israel after the screening.

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Am I trying to give you the proper context before describing what I saw? Or am I putting off putting into words images I’ll never forget?

I’ve learned how ugly the world can be. I recently spent a few weeks in Ukraine, where I heard firsthand story after story of the indignities and inhumanity of Russian occupation.

I’ve interviewed Iranian escapees from Tehran’s notorious prison for dissidents, including a young brother and sister tortured in front of each other. 

But human beings still have the capacity to shock — if one can call Hamas members human beings. I’ll long be haunted by what happened Oct. 7.

 Everyone should be. 

The footage eases you into things — a little. Terrorists fire at motorists on a highway. They enter a kibbutz and blow an ambulance’s tires first. They shoot a dog, who remains shaking on the street. They light a home on fire. Then they start entering houses.

Israel collected video from a wide variety of sources: public closed-circuit TV, traffic cameras, dashcams of terrorists and victims, as well as their social-media posts and messages home. In footage from fighters’ body cameras, you can hear the murderers breathe heavily as they nervously approach their prey. 

I wanted to look away

It was hard to watch. Harder still for the Israelis. The consul general admitted afterward he couldn’t stay for the whole screening. Another staffer seemed to find most difficult to see and hear some of the same footage I did: A father tries to get his young children, dressed only in underpants, safely to a backyard shelter.

A grenade lands before he can close the door, and he’s dead. A terrorist takes his two boys back into the house, and a security camera captures their devastation. The blast blinded one boy in an eye. The other falls to the ground, plaintively pleading, “Why am I alive? Why am I alive?” (The boys, we’re told, managed to escape — at least physically.) 

We see homes in kibbutzim, fields young concertgoers ran through, Israel Defense Forces installations with terrified young women huddling in a room. 

Blood. Blood everywhere, trails of it, puddles of it. Burnt bodies still smoking. A man with his nose blown off. Headless Israeli soldiers. An elderly woman clad only in her brightly colored underwear never meant to be seen by so many. Piles of bodies surrounded by young men celebrating, chanting, “Allahu akbar!” 

Some footage has been geolocated to Gaza. A broken woman is taken from the back of a Jeep, the rear of her pants coated in blood, and brought to the back seat. We can easily understand what’s likely happening to her there. Young men clamor over, trying to get a look inside, some recording with their cellphones. Two older men walk over — finally, this will stop, I almost think. No: They wanted a good look, too. 

Women who were raped had their legs broken, consulate staff said. Then they were killed. 

Many times I wanted to look away, but I forced myself not to. We journalists had to see what happened so we could tell the world.

Yet here is a line from a CBS News piece written by a journalist who saw the footage in Israel: “In another clip, a militant stands over a man who appears to have been shot in the gut and hacks at him multiple times with a garden hoe.”

The words “terrorist” or “terrorism” don’t appear in the piece. (They don’t appear in The New York Times’ report of that screening either.) 

I can tell you it was not “a militant” who “stands over a man.” A group of terrorists argue over who gets to behead the man, a Thai worker bleeding profusely from his stomach but still alive. Someone does repeatedly hack at him with a hoe, trying to behead him. Every single time, the terrorist yells, “Allahu akbar!”

Support for atrocities

That difference in detail is why the consulate staff sat through 45 minutes of misery.

They need people to see what happened — and put the word out to counter those who pretend it didn’t or wasn’t as bad as claimed. Journalists from supposedly serious publications insist you can’t say Hamas beheaded babies — sure, dead babies were found without their heads, but who knows who did the deed?

The hate I witnessed goes beyond those who entered Israel that day. A young man uses a dead Israeli woman’s phone to call his parents and brag of killing 10 Jews “with my bare hands.”

He pleads, “Please be proud of me, Dad.”

That’s the culture Israel must fight even after it destroys those who planned and executed the Oct. 7 massacre.

And then there’s New York City. A day after the screening, thousands of antisemites marched into Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge after a rally at the Brooklyn Museum. At the front were people holding a banner that read “By any means necessary.”

Understand what signs like that, which are becoming more and more common, mean.

These people know what happened Oct. 7. They are gathering in large numbers in New York and other cities around the country to show their support for the animals who committed these atrocities.

They are as bloodthirsty as the heavy-breathing terrorists whose voices the people of Israel will never get out of their heads.

Kelly Jane Torrance is The Post’s op-ed editor.