This is not a call for war, or a call for gore, it is a call for transparency, so we can see what we are up against. And by “we,” I mean civilized citizens of democracies.
There is an adage in story-telling: Don’t tell me — show me.
I want to see the atrocities committed by the terror group Hamas. And others, too.
I don’t want second-hand accounts. I want to see for myself.
Not out of any prurient interest, or to magnify a thirst for revenge. The sickening gore should be shown to prove that it did happen, and to reveal the nature of the enemy.
At the end of World War II, as the Allies liberated Nazi concentration camps, Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower requested war correspondents make a film and photographic record of what the shocked G.I.s had found.
Why?
Eisenhower foresaw a day when the horrors of the Holocaust might be denied. He was right, because that has happened. There are Holocaust deniers even with the evidence, even though the films of piles of bodies and emaciated, stick-thin inmates have been viewed world-wide. Imagine how many deniers there might be without the evidence.
Nazis tried to hide the evidence of their crimes. Hamas terrorists recorded theirs on GoPro video cameras, and on the cell phones and Facebook accounts of their victims. Sick, and evil beyond belief.
The world has been shielded from those images, blindfolded, surprisingly and foolishly, by the IDF — Israel Defense Forces.
The IDF has drawn the curtain, probably out of respect for the grieving families. I understand the humane instinct, but it is costing Israel in the Court of Public Opinion — a kangaroo court that starts out being stacked against it.
Last week, a group of international journalists were assembled in Tel Aviv to view a 43-minute video compilation of Hamas attacks on civilians.
A senior Israeli officer told the group: “You won’t see rape, there’s no rape in this video… We won’t show you beheaded babies,” saying such images existed but would not be shown.
That is a terrible mistake.
Like the concentration camps images, these atrocities should be shared.
Rape victims’ faces can be blurred, as was done in one widely aired video showing a half-naked woman in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza being hit and jeered by mobs. (She was later identified, and listed as dead.) There was an unsubstantiated report of “40 beheaded babies,” which I commented upon, expressing disbelief. If there are such babies, IDF should either show them or shut up about them because it will not be believed.
The world is not inclined to take Israel’s word.
The IDF video, according to ABC News, was cobbled together from Hamas helmet cams, mobile phone video, surveillance video, dashboard camera video and victims’ livestreams.
The journalists were relieved of their cameras and cell phones, and were told they could describe what they saw, but could not use any images.
Out of deference to the victims, the IDF sanitized the video, but it was still repulsive enough to sicken some of the journalists.
That’s not enough. I want everyone sickened.
As a former TV critic, I know why broadcast networks — and even cable, which are not regulated by the government — shy away from showing images that will horrify their audience. They are afraid of the blowback. In the service of transparency, they shouldn’t be. Sometimes the truth is horrible.
TV has an oft-used phrase when leading into a story containing some gore: “Some of the images may be disturbing.”
But they are not disturbing, because they either edit out the “worst” images, or they blur the parts that are disturbing.
The withholding of the Hamas atrocities creates an imbalance of imagery. The world is able to view Israel’s daily bombardment of Gaza, as dead or injured civilians are pulled from rubble.
Although Israeli policy is to strike military targets, Hamas insinuates itself into civilian areas, resulting in unavoidable images of dead civilians with no counter balancing images of Israeli citizens deliberately beheaded and hacked to death.
I would post the evil imagines I am talking about here, except the “worst” ones I can find are not posted by what I consider to be credible sources.
There is no question in my mind that soldiers and civilians were beheaded. There is one video of a terrorist trying to hack off an Israeli’s head with a hoe. It can’t be determined if the civilian was dead.
There are creditable reports of rape, and “torture,” without specificity, women’s breasts being cut off, eyes gouged out, dismembered bodies, people being burned to a crisp, even a report of a baby being baked to death in an oven in front of its mother, who was later killed.
If all this were shown, would it affect public opinion?
I hope so.
Is my intent to turn people against the Palestinians?
No, only those Palestinians who are in Hamas.
Under the same policy, I would show the bowling center victims of the Maine shooter — and every mass shooting site.
Polls show the majority of Americans are in favor of expanded gun control, such as universal background checks, raising the legal age to 21, mental health checks, and a 30-day waiting period before purchase.
But people don’t make a lot of noise when gun legislation comes before Congress.
Had they seen the carnage, things they could never unsee, they might have been screaming at the top of their lungs.
And that’s a good thing.
Transparency is always welcome.
You are saying what needs to be said. The Truth will help. How do we get at the truth?
Find the best sources.
Your column reminds me of the one comment my late father made after he came home from Europe and the POW camp. He said when he landed on French soil in October 1944, he knew he was in a war when he saw a German soldier whose head had been run over by a tank. It was a sight that haunted him forever after. That’s what we need to see: the true horror of what Hamas is wreaking. Show it to the snowflakes in college, chanting against Israel.
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These Hamas barbarians need to be hunted down and killed. They are worse than animals. Killing babies, raping women and beheading people is the act of the evil Hamas murders. They need to be put down by any act necessary as soon as possible….like now.
Agree they need to be exterminated.
The latest likely fake news going around is that the beheading of babies is a lie. If it actually happened, this needs to be confirmed. We can’t shove any of this stuff under the rug!
By the way Stu, the LiberalInquirer will probably publish a letter from me in the next couple of days criticizing the excesses of Vision Zero.
Thanks for posting this!
John
I strongly doubt the 40 beheaded babies story. I doubt there were 40 babies in those small settlements. As I wrote, put up or shut up.
Per Vision Zero, I wish I had more time to devote to that. I am happy to see traffic deaths go down, but have always believed enforcement of traffic laws is the key.
Stu, thank you for writing this. Watching world opinion move toward sympathy for Gaza, leaping over the bodies of beheaded babies, raped women, hostages, and dead Israelis, is something I never thought I would see. Hamas has been in control of Gaza since Israel left in 2008, after they were elected. Gazans could have and should have worked to unseat them from power, as many other countries have done when terrorists/dictators/ true colonizers (Italy, Mussolini; Ireland and the British government). Israel gave them what they said they wanted: the right to self-govern. But now, for the sake of Israel, AND the Gazans, Hamas must be destroyed. I weep for the kids who are casualties of this, but Israel has no choice. And to hell with all of the woke who think that they can easily divide this conflict into two groups and engage in blaming the victims. Anyone who harrases or attacks any Jewish person or organization should be prosecuted for hate crimes: Starting with the “anonymous” Hamas sympathizers on all college campuses.
Your comment about telling and showing the truth of Hamas’s inhuman viciousness is why a strategy I read right after they invaded Israel, made hardball sense, knowing that War is Hell, and Hell was unleashed by the Hamas terrorists.
No water, medicine, food or anything until the hostages were released and all the Gazan residents turned in, pointed out, or killed every Hamas member. Only then would supplies be sent. That brutal incentive seemed to be the best strategy to end it quickly and to save many more innocent lives than will be lost in a lingering war that also destroys all the buildings.
War is Hell and it was Hamas’s medieval barbarism that started it.
Stu thank you for telling it as it is
Anybody who believes in Justice knows Hamas must be eraticated, just as the Nazis of WWII. Yes I believed everything should have been documented, but, even if only one of these atrocities took place, it is enough to put and end to these animals existence. I don’t know very much about Palestinians, but I know the Hamas live within them, and you cannot kill innocent people to get to the bad. So Israel and maybe Americans too, with the help of the Palestinians need to defeat Hamas,
The majority of Gazans do not want Hamas, but they are unarmed and powerless.
Thank you Stu. You brought up General Eisenhower. When he liberated the death camps, he demanded it had to be recorded. His quote. “Get it all on record now. Get the films! Get the witnesses, because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.” They deny it anyway unfortunately. Savage animals. The Germans claimed they didn’t know about the atrocities. These monsters can’t claim that and they still don’t care, if fact, they double down.
Thanks for finding the actual quote. I failed to find it.
Great post, Stu, and absolutely accurate. People NEED to see these atrocities to fully understand what went down there. There are far too many people who simply deny these things without evidence, and of course, many who make claims to the contrary also without evidence. Hamas is clearly an evil organization who wants Israel destroyed and all Jews exterminated. That is enough to me to agree that they need to be eliminated once and for all. There will certainly be a sad cost to innocent civilians in Gaza who are used as human shields by the Hamas terrorists. But I see no way around this, unfortunately. In WWII Okinawa, the Japanese also used innocent civilians to shield themselves, and many were killed. This was NOT on the advancing American soldiers, but clearly on the Japanese themselves. It’s the exact same story here.
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Thank you Stu.Bykofsky, and thank you, Gardener A. Cadwalader, for telling the truth.
Happy to do it.
Thank you for your writing!
You are welcome and if you like what you see, tell your friends.