The most upsetting thing is not the fury of a man who insists on cutting off the head of a corpse with a spade. These are not the piled up, charred, dismembered, decapitated bodies. The most moving thing in the video of the October 7 massacre edited by the Israeli army is the violent contrast between the horror and the ordinary.
Terrorists hiding behind plant pots on the sunny veranda of a blue house on the kibbutz. They hunt their prey. We hear their shortness of breath, their excitement. One of them brandishes a lighter, sets fire to the macrame decorations hanging on the walls.
Young people gathered under multicolored canvases to dance until the end of the night. For a moment, they have their hearts celebrating and their lives ahead of them. The next moment, they are lying in blood and dust, inert, like dismantled dolls.
Mickey Mouse pajamas on a child’s body, or what’s left of them.
Another child, this one alive and well, pouring water on his brother’s wounds. A touching gesture of humanity, a pause to allow us to breathe between two atrocious images.
The father of these two children has just died before their eyes. Killed by a grenade in his own home, on a Saturday morning that should have been like any other. The children are still in their underwear. One panics: “Dad is dead! It’s not a joke, he’s dead!
“I know, I saw it,” his brother replies, stunned.
“I think we’re going to die…”
A terrorist opens the fridge, offers the boys water. ” Mom ! I want mom! », shouts one of them. His brother can only see in one eye because of the explosion. The terrorist grabs a bottle of Coke and leaves. The child screams: “Why am I alive?!” »
After receiving the invitation from the Consulate General of Israel in Montreal, I seriously asked myself the question: should I go or not? Do I really need to see this? I knew there would be no going back. These ultraviolent images would remain forever engraved on my retina.
The video has already been shown in Israel, at the UN and in around thirty countries. For the first time, Wednesday morning, it was broadcast in Quebec, at the official residence of Consul General Paul Hirschson. My invitation was not transferable. There would be no questions or debate.
Just a flood of raw, unbearable images for 43 minutes.
I asked myself other questions. Would I play into Israel’s hands? Inevitably. The Israeli authorities do not even hide it. If they show this video, it is so that the world does not forget the massacre which triggered the current catastrophe in the Middle East.
We are in the middle of a war of images. Those of the carnage of October 7 contrast with those, devastating, of Gaza under Israeli bombs.
But I also risked playing into the hands of Hamas. Most of the scenes in the video were filmed by the group’s activists. They attached GoPro cameras to their foreheads before shooting grandmothers. “Take pictures of the heads, play with them,” a Hamas commander orders a militant who reports killing Israeli soldiers.
I decided to go anyway. Hoping to play into the hands of humans.
These 1200 humans whose terrible massacre we already tend to put into perspective, to justify it in the name of a cause, to sometimes even deny it. Or, worse yet, to glorify it.
We were four journalists and two SPVM investigators. We had to leave our cell phones at the entrance. The consul said nothing, or almost nothing. He started the video.
In 43 minutes, we saw the murder of 138 men, women and children. A fraction of the massacre of October 7. We saw Hamas militants shooting at cars, chasing families, mutilating corpses, parading the dead and wounded in the backs of pickup trucks through the streets of Gaza.
We saw cheering crowds.
We saw the exalted faces of the terrorists. “Dad, I’m talking to you on a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and her husband. Dad, check your WhatsApp. I killed ten Jews with my bare hands! Their blood on my hands! Mom, your son is a hero! »
We saw them stalking people under tables. “How many people, two?” Enlighten me. Wait, wait. Be patient. Take a photo. Oh, the dogs. Shoot him in the head. »
We saw no mercy. Only jubilation.
At the end, we saw the footage of the first rescuer arriving at the music festival site, a devastated battlefield. ” There is someone here ? Everyone is dead. Give us a sign of life! Is anyone alive? She’s dead… She’s dead… She’s dead… Someone, please? Can anyone answer? »
The consul showed us the exit. No one spoke in the elevator. I think we were all stunned by what we had just seen. Without words.
The last time I felt this bad was at the trial of Alexandre Bissonnette, when the prosecutor showed the images captured by the surveillance cameras of the great mosque of Quebec. In the end, the judge slipped the USB drive into an envelope, which he sealed with tape. No one would ever see this killing again.
This is what had to be done, to avoid a ripple effect. For the massacre of October 7, it is already too late. A host of bloody images can be found in just a few clicks on the web. Never has a pogrom been so filmed, shown, documented. This was Hamas’ objective. His own propaganda.
“Come on, this one is alive. Look at the camera! Look at the camera! This one is alive. Come, pull him by the hair, my brother…”
Wednesday morning, I saw a horror film without actors or special effects. With real people. For a moment, they were alive. The next moment, they were dead. Intolerable images that the whole world is beginning to forget, as other intolerable images from Gaza are superimposed.