I review the Hamas snuff film

I have seen the Hamas snuff film.

It is the 43-minute video compilation of horrors committed by Hamas during the Oct. 7 atrocity excursion into southern Israel, resulting in 1,400 deaths  murders, including 33 Americans, and some 240 kidnappings.

It was screened Thursday evening at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History,  5th & Market, for select guests to “bear witness,” in the words of an Israel Defense Forces spokesman who introduced the video, which is titled “Bearing Witness.”

With due respect for the dead and maimed, I am going to treat this as a movie review. 

It is a horror movie, of course, but for me, it wasn’t revolting enough.

Tissues were handed out in the auditorium before the video, and some people needed them, and others gasped at some of the images. Honestly, I had seen much of it before, as would had anyone closely following the war. TV has extensively shown a car driven by an Israeli, who you don’t see, being fired on by terrorists across the road. The windshield shatters, the car drifts across the highway and stops when it hits another car. You know the driver is dead. 

The networks can show that easily because there is no blood.

In that same scene, a terrorist walks into the frame and sees a civilian under the rear of his car. He casually walks over to the man and shoots him in the head. I don’t know if the man is already dead. I am struck by the nonchalance of the murderer, which is seen many times. The terrorists know the civilians are unarmed, so this is like a field trip. They are casual, cold, calculating.

Israel gleaned this footage from dashboard cameras, closed-circuit security video, traffic signal cameras, victims’ cameras and — mostly — from GoPro body cams worn by the terrorists themselves.

Much of the video is jumpy, which can’t be helped if it is body-worn, but it contains too many fragments,  two-second bits and pieces that disorient the viewer.

The video should be edited down to 10 minutes, with the most gruesome material added.

In one horrific scene, a father in pajamas is rushing his two sons, ages about 5 and 7, out of their home and into a shed next door that might be a safe room. But the father doesn’t shut the door and a terrorist tosses a grenade into the shed.

The father is killed, but the two young sons, in underwear shorts, stagger out.

The younger one is blinded in one eye. Both are crying. One is wailing, “Why am I not dead?”

The terrorist takes them into the house and raids the refrigerator for a beverage while the oldest boy says they are going to die.

The video stops there. Were they left alone? Kidnapped? Murdered?

The video comes from a house camera which would supply the answer. But IDF does not give the answer. Too gruesome? Too shocking for the audience? Don’t you want the audience to be shocked?

What we saw was 10% of the deaths, the IDF said.

The IDF clearly sanitized what it released.

As terrorists walk down the path in a kibbutz, a friendly black labrador retriever approaches them, wagging its tail.

They shoot him dead.

The IDF shows the killing of a dog, but not people? 

There was one brief scene of a terrorist firing through a screen door, hitting a man sitting in a chair.

It can barely be made out.

Why the sensitivity to showing cold-blooded murder?

When this video was shown for the first time about a week ago, the IDF spokesman said they would not be showing rapes, they would not be showing dead babies, they would not be showing torture. And they will not be releasing this video to the public.

Why?

Out of respect for the families of the dead, they say.

Not a good enough reason.

If you have it — show it. I made this case in an earlier column.

At the end of World War II, as Allies liberated concentration camps, Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower requested the media to photograph and film all the horrors they found.

He wanted the world to know, because, he said that in 50 years people would be denying that it happened.

He was right, and we have Holocaust deniers even with the photographic record.

The current video should be made available to the public, with appropriate warnings and safeguards. 

The witness should be borne by all mankind, not a few dozen invited guests.

Even in its toned-down version, it presents a threat to the pro-Hamas side. When being screened Wednesday at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, fights broke out. In the Museum of Tolerance. Someone didn’t want the truth told. 

The Hamas video does show a lot of gore — trails of blood, what appear to be body parts, plus a staggering amount of dead bodies, many burned to a crisp, many with their facial features twisted in a horrible death mask.

With intercepted radio traffic calling for bodies to be decapitated, or crucified, I can’t believe the fiends of Hamas did not video people being tortured and burned alive. 

If you want to bear witness, show the worst. Sear those images into brains that will never forget.

“Bearing Witness” currently has an X rating.

Israel should pump it up to an XXX rating and show it to the world, so the world will understand the nature of the foe.

The unspeakable savagery is real. It should not be filtered.