None So Blind as Those Who Refuse to See

The Horrors of October 7th

A while ago, I watched the infamous 47-minute video documenting the atrocities of October 7th — the one that is withheld from public release to protect the victims’ privacy. When the Israeli government invited European media to a private screening, several refused to attend, describing it as a “PR campaign” that “only serves to tilt the balance of proportionality” in the war. The Belgian parliament likewise refused to watch it, after protest from left-wing parties who dismissed it as Israeli propaganda. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.¹

The video

The worst part of this video is not what it displays, but who is displaying it: the perpetrators themselves. Gleefully. Sadistically. Unabashedly. Most of the footage was filmed by Hamas terrorists on their GoPro bodycams; some was also filmed by ordinary Gazan civilians on their cellphones

Even the Nazis tried to cover up their atrocities, but Hamas broadcasts theirs for the entire world to see. The killers are euphoric throughout the massacre, and their relentless, ecstatic cries of “Allahu Akbar” — punctuated by the occasional “Kill the Jew!” — are simply nauseating.

Some images are seared into my memory forever. I will never forget the two boys in their underwear, one with his eye socket hanging out of his face, asking his brother if he thinks they’re going to die — while the Hamas monster who had just thrown a grenade into their safe room helps himself to a drink from their fridge, taking a casual break from the slaughter.

Neither will I ever forget the terrorists playing football with a severed head. Or the throngs of Gazans crowding around pickup trucks loaded with the mutilated corpses of Jewish women, filming and spitting on the bodies. Or the terrorist coolly and methodically cutting off the head of an already dead victim, like a skilled butcher. Or the woman in Kibbutz Mefalsim, crouching and begging in vain for mercy. Or the Thai migrant worker whose head is viciously hacked off with a garden hoe — another “Zionist colonizer” getting what he deserved, right?

What Did You Think Decolonisation Meant?

One Hamas terrorist breathlessly called his parents from the phone of the Jewish woman he had just slaughtered:

Hello Dad, I’m talking to you from Mefalsim (kibbutz). Open WhatsApp and see. I killed ten Jews with my own hands. Your son killed Jews! I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and her husband, their blood is on my hands... Hold your head high with pride, Dad!

Many people living the Israeli Kibbutzim were left-wing peace activists who had Gazan friends and even the volunteered to drive Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals.

In Kibbutz Kfar Aza, each teenager receives a small housing unit (Beit No’ar or “youth house”), to transition into independence. Hamas went from door to door to massacre them on Oct 7th. My photo.

There is some evidence of sexual violence in the video — the charred corpse of a young woman with her legs splayed and her genitals exposed — but relatively little is shown explicitly. Apparently even Hamas draws a line somewhere: they are not as proud of raping Jewish women as they are of murdering them. More likely, they simply didn’t want to embarrass the delicate sensibilities of their legions of useful idiots in the West.

A professor at my former alma mater, Ghent University on Oct 7, 2023. The tweet is still up.

Sexual terrorism

But yes — there was rape. Not “rape” in scare quotes, as the apologists would have it, but sadistic, murderous sexual violence, documented in a damning new report by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women’s rights NGO. The report, titled “Silenced No More”, is based on hundreds of formal and informal interviews with survivors and witnesses, more than 10,000 photographs and over 1,800 cumulative hours of video.

Here’s a trailer about the report:

Across its 300 pages, the report describes a recurring pattern of the following behavior:

rape and gang rape; sexual torture; genital targeting (including burning, mutilation, and gunshot wounds directed at intimate areas); forced nudity and exposure; binding and restraint; postmortem sexual humiliation and desecration; public parading and display of women and children; abduction of mothers and children; [sexual violence] in the presence or near vicinity of family members; and perpetrator-driven filming and digital dissemination of acts of [sexual violence]

The sexual abuse was deliberately inflicted in front of family members, calculated to destroy familial bonds. If no family members were around, the perpetrators filmed and circulated the gruesome abuse via social media and victims’ own accounts, sometimes sending material directly to their families.

As the Daily Mail reports, the “freedom fighters” from Hamas deliberately and systematically defiled female bodies: “the terrorists shot their eyes, their faces and their breasts, and even targeted their most intimate parts, to destroy their beauty and rob their loved ones of a final goodbye.” Genitals were stabbed with knives or riddled with bullets, breasts were severed, pelvises broken.

The sadism is unspeakable.

And it was premeditated and organized. The terrorists crossing into Israel carried printed Arabic-to-Hebrew phrasebooks with handy expressions like “take off your pants,” “lie down,” “spread your legs,” and “don’t make trouble.” I wonder why they expected to need those particular phrases?

I know one thing: no civilized country on earth would tolerate the existence of an organization like Hamas on its border after October 7th. Not one. This includes every self-righteous Westerner currently lecturing Israel from thousands of kilometres away, without an inch of skin in the game.

1. In case you’re wondering, I watched the video during a private screening at the Israeli embassy in Brussels, at my own request. I viewed it alone in a secluded room via a secure livestream from Israel, as the footage is not stored locally. I wasn’t permitted to take photos or record anything, but I was free to describe what I saw, and I took notes during the screening.