(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - No one at Friday's screening in New York of the raw footage of Hamas' atrocities during its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel will forget what they saw. Why did the Hamas men, upon confronting the dead body of a teenage girl, start cheering? Why did they argue over who would get to decapitate a Thai guest worker they had shot, then proclaim "Allahu akbar" with every swing at his neck? "Allahu akbar" was on their lips over and over as they shot defenseless civilians, dragged corpses and pumped round after round into the dead. This isn't Palestinian nationalism, or a proper understanding of Islam. This is nihilistic jihad. Some Hamas men took their time to execute a terrified woman after cornering her and shining a flashlight on her face. One raided the fridge in front of the young children he had just wounded with a grenade that killed their father. During the music-festival massacre, a terrorist paused to put a bullet through each of the porta-potties, lest a single girl escape. There were also the shell-shocked faces, heavy breathing and stopped cries of young women hiding in bunkers and dumpsters, knowing they weren't going to survive. Then came the photos: piles of bodies, bloodied and mutilated, babies burned, families burned together, some with hands tied. The point of the screening, explained Aviv Ezra, Israel's acting consul general, was to show that "this isn't more of the same." "There is no political solution with Hamas," not after Oct. 7. Hamas in Gaza now "threatens the basic contract between Israel's government and its citizens," the never-again clause that Israel is a safe haven for the Jews. Israel's citizens will not forget the Hamas-recorded images of Oct. 7. Neither should the rest of us.
2023-10-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive