Nearly three years have passed since the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit assembled a 47-minute film, “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” sometimes referred to unofficially as “the atrocity film” or “the film of horrors.” It contains raw footage from the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel along the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023, much of it captured on GoPro body cameras worn by terrorists.
Other images were recorded by Israeli civilians on their mobile phones as they desperately tried to escape. In one chilling recording, a Palestinian terrorist can be heard proudly telling his parents, “Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!”
This was not ordinary photojournalism. It was crime-scene evidence using the ubiquitous digital technology of our age.
The film is extraordinarily graphic. Viewers see burned bodies, burned babies, civilians shot inside their homes, rape scenes, the mutilation and beheading of bodies, corpses thrown into dumpsters and female hostages dragged by their hair as they are abducted. Those who have seen the film have described being shocked to their core by the brutality.
Carefully controlled screenings were held for national and international journalists, foreign diplomats and Hollywood executives, intended both to document what happened and to counter criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war. The Israeli government considered whether to make the film available to the general public. The debate centered on a genuine dilemma: whether showing such horrific material might further traumatize an already traumatized population versus the importance of confronting the public with the truth about the provocation that precipitated the war.
In the end, the film was not released publicly. It’s time to reconsider that decision.
The brutal evidence should have been seen much sooner. Other important documentation efforts have since emerged—from Sheryl Sandberg’s “Screams Before Silence” to the treatment of Oct. 7 and its aftermath in the hit TV series “Fauda.” But that doesn’t eliminate the need to confront the original material.
The continuing inversion of truth and the erosion of historical context demand that the public and world leaders be confronted with the unfiltered, painful evidence of what occurred. Keeping the film from public view has consequences. The world has been judging Israel’s actions in Gaza while often viewing Oct. 7 through a distorted or incomplete narrative.
Consider what has happened since then.
Anti-Israel demonstrations filled city streets and university campuses. Reports and claims about bombing, starvation, civilian casualties and genocide rapidly became central to the international narrative, often before facts could be independently established or fully contextualized. Jews in America and around the world have faced heightened antisemitic rhetoric, as well as an uptick in vandalism and hate crimes.
All of this occurred without the public seeing the 47-minute film containing unfiltered evidence of the atrocities committed on Oct. 7. That context matters.
Historical precedents exist for understanding why documentation matters.
In 1904, Chaim Bialik wrote In the City of Slaughter a searing poetic response to the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 in the Russian Empire. He described the devastation in unforgettable language:
“ … Go to the ruins, to the gaping breaches,
To walls and hearths, shattered as though by thunder … .”
It transformed distant reports of violence into an emotional experience for Jews who had not witnessed the pogrom.
Finnish American Jewish historian Max Dimont later wrote that Bialik’s poem helped inspire thousands of Jewish young people to abandon pacifism and join the Russian underground in opposition to the czar and tyranny. Vladimir Jabotinsky was among those influenced by the events and their aftermath.
The Riegner telegram
In August 1942, Gerhart M. Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, transmitted a warning through the World Jewish Congress representative in England, Samuel Sydney Silverman, to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in New York City. It was among the earliest credible warnings reaching Western officials that Nazi Germany was pursuing a plan to systematically annihilate European Jewry.
The contents of the Riegner telegram reached American and British officials but encountered skepticism, verification concerns and bureaucratic delay. Its wider implications were not immediately acted upon. The consequences of the failure to respond adequately to such warnings were catastrophic. The Nazi killing machinery continued operating, and 6 million Jews across the European continent were ultimately murdered.
At the end of World War II, American Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower understood another essential principle: Atrocities must be documented before their perpetrators—or their defenders—can erase, distort or deny them.
Eisenhower ordered American forces to document the Nazi concentration camps and encouraged journalists, photographers and filmmakers to record what they found. He also arranged for German civilians to visit the camps so they could not easily claim ignorance of what had occurred in their midst.
Because of that documentation, the world remembers the visual evidence of the Holocaust: the striped uniforms; the crematoria; the piles of bodies and bones; the mountains of spectacles, shoes and suitcases.
Today, antisemitism and anti-Zionism are widespread. Israel faces intense criticism from governments, international institutions, universities, cultural organizations and social-media networks. AI-driven platforms can distribute misinformation and inflammatory narratives at extraordinary speed. American educational institutions receive substantial financial support from Middle Eastern governments. Hollywood and other cultural institutions are similarly engaged in disparaging Israel and supporting Palestinians.
The Jewish state has also faced campaigns involving accusations of genocide, BDS, international legal actions and blood-libel-like accusations. Its citizens and army are fighting not only a kinetic war, but also a battle over history, evidence, legitimacy and public perception.
Misinformation must not go uncontested. Jews have always placed extraordinary value on emet, “truth.” At a moment when images, narratives and historical claims can be manipulated and amplified in seconds, the answer cannot be less evidence.
That is why the film “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre” belongs in the historical record.
The world has heard countless other interpretations. It’s time for the world to see the facts.
