— Feature, Musings —11.06.2023 05:46 PM
My latest: the truth of what happened on October 7
October 7 was beautiful, clear day, and the sky above Israel seemed to go on forever.
It was the weekend. It was the Sabbath. It was a religious holiday.
What we saw – taken from home security camera footage, or mobile phones, or live-streaming, but mostly from the footage Hamas shot themselves, on GoPros – was so, so clear.
It wasn’t fuzzy or faded or hard to see. You could see all of it. You could hear all of it.
This is what we saw. This is what we heard.
I saw the decapitated heads of babies and children. I saw babies with bullet holes in them. I saw babies and children who had been burned until all that you could see was the outline of their little bodies, arms reaching up to God.
I saw a girl, perhaps six or seven, her tiny frame covered in blood and dirt. She was wearing Mickey Mouse pajamas. There was the body of another girl, even younger. She was still in a sun dress with blue butterflies on it. Her hands were arrayed across her chest, like little broken pieces of china.
I saw the Hamas monsters – they were disguised as men, but they were assuredly monsters – firing North Korean Type 58 self-loading rifles at cars carrying Israeli families. The windshields would crack and shatter, there would be sprays of blood and viscera, and then the cars would slow to a halt. The monsters would then pull the Israelis out, and shoot them in their heads. They did that over and over and over. Then they’d cheer and dance beside the bodies. They left behind ISIS flags, here and there.
I saw them at the gate to the Be’eri kibbutz, waiting for a resident to drive up and for the gate start to open. Then they shot the man, over and over, and then they walked inside. Once there, they crept past the small white homes. They didn’t speak. You could hear them breathing on their videos. Once or twice, they’d say: “Where did they go?” They were looking for civilians to kill.
I saw them at the rear of a home, where a child’s swing could be seen. Some music is playing. A cell phone still glows on a table. One monster reached up and sliced a window screen with a box-cutter, then shot a woman who was huddled on the floor, trying to hide.
I saw a dog, a black retriever, approach the monsters, his tail wagging. They shoot him – once, twice, three times. The dog falls to the sidewalk.
I saw a man running out of his house, carrying one son, the other son rushing ahead of them. They were in their underwear. They ran into what looked like a concrete shelter. A few minutes later, one of the monsters threw a hand grenade into the space where the man had taken his boys, killing the man. The boys go into their house, bloodied, crying out for their father. The younger one can’t see out one of his eyes, because he didn’t have his eye anymore. “We’re going to die,” his brother says.
I saw two monsters enter a kindergarten. There are little knapsacks hung neatly on the door that the monsters pass through. A woman is hiding inside a room there, under some of the pillows the children use at nap time. There’s no sound. She’s alive – and then, moments later, she’s dead, or close to it. They carry her out. We don’t see her again.
I saw another woman, hiding under a desk in a kitchen. She’s crying. They shoot her three times, and the crying stops.
I saw a man, perhaps a foreign national – dozens were killed or kidnapped that day – lying on the ground near a wall. He’s bleeding. He moves his arms, a bit. One of the monsters then takes a hoe, and starts hacking at the man’s neck, trying to behead him. “God is great!” the monster screams every time he brings down the blade on the man’s neck.
I saw a woman, dead, holding a dead child in her arms. They are in a room. It’s a bit dim. Then I see there are other dead children and adults there, too. The monsters stand there for a while, looking at the bodies. Sometimes, they fire more bullets into them and cheer.
I saw senior citizens at a bus stop in Sderot, which isn’t far from the border. They had been on a sightseeing tour, and the monsters killed them all. Their bodies were twisted on the ground, left among the canes and walkers and the dirt.
I heard a Hamas monster calling his parents in Gaza. “Dad,” he said in Arabic, “I’m talking from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and her husband. With my bare hands, Dad. Dad, I killed ten, ten with my bare hands.” His mother comes on the line. “Mom, your son is a hero! Kill kill kill them!”
There was another one, caught on tape. “Let history be my witness,” he said. “That this was the first man I killed. The first one. A Jew. Give me a knife, I swear to you by God I will cut off his head.”
There was another one. Two monsters are talking about a dead Jew. “Bring him and crucify him,” one says. He laughs. “We’ve totally slaughtered them.”
I saw a man trying to escape the music festival in Re’im. He tries to hide at the rear of a car. A monster sees him, walks over, and shoots the man in the head.
I saw the Hamas monsters – all of them in military gear, top to bottom, no T-shirts or jeans or the like – take selfies with the bodies of the people they had killed at some of the 30 towns and army bases they attacked. Over and over, they’d yell: “Allah akbar!” God is great, but God does not seem to be present on this day.
At the end of the footage – 45 minutes of it, but it feels like it has gone on for 45 weeks – a first responder finds the bodies of the young people at the music festival. There are dozens of them, bloodied and splayed out in the dirt. “Is anyone alive?” he asks, and there is silence. “Give us a sign of life. Is anyone alive?” But no sound comes.
There was more, much more. About 25 of us are there, mainly journalists and writers. A woman is crying. A man I know is crying.
I go outside and my colleague Brian Lilley is waiting for me. He asks me how I am.
And then I start to cry, and I cannot stop.
Reading this drained my breath away and I am suspended in between a heart beat…..
Warren,
Personally, I’m definitely not strong enough mentally to watch any of this and survive. That’s an absolute certainty. I’m REALLY worried about you and every single person who felt obliged to watch this type of footage as an historical witness. My God, I pray that all of you will quickly seek counselling.
These are crimes against humanity. Nothing less. What I fear are legions of after-the-fact psychological victims, including journalists. I will be thinking of all of you and praying that each one of you can psychologically heal from these inhuman acts. Those terrorists are definitely going to Hell and that will be the least of those bastards’ worries.
Can barely read it. Can’t imagine seeing it.
Hamas not only filmed themselves but also posted some of their videos online. A news junkie, I happened to be scanning various sites shortly after the attack occurred.
I saw videos of young women being dragged away. One of a man being decapitated with a hoe. A young woman partially dressed, splayed with broken legs in the back of a pickup truck. Families with young children sitting on blood spattered floors, terrified. Music festival youth being gunned down. An RPG attack on an ambulance.
After such horror, it’s unbelievable what has been happening in western countries. I especially never thought I would see such antisemitism against the Jewish people in Canada as I have seen in the last four weeks. Some nights I have trouble falling asleep because I feel so agitated and upset about the unfairness.
The weak leadership from Trudeau is unsurprising. But I expected a bit more from Ford. Olivia Chow and NDP have shown themselves to be either tolerant or in full support of hate.
Thank you Mr. Kinsella, for sharing your experience, as tough as I know it has been for you.
The world must know the truth about the depravity of Hamas terrorists, and the lengths they will go in attempting to eradicate Jews from the earth. Any other peoples not conforming to their narrow view of faith are also future targets.
I applaud you for having the courage to speak out, when many other journalists are silent. Stay strong.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
This is powerful. It should be mandatory reading for every first year student on every campus.
These atrocities need to be seen!! With so much of the world in denial we need witnesses.
LDM,
It’s not so much denial as deliberate attempts at justification, incredible as that may seem. In short, some people wouldn’t ever check their preconceived bias even if all of the Hamas footage was right in their faces. The hypocrisy of those so-called people is simply unmeasurable. Couple it with their flagrant lack of humanity. Those people aren’t really human. They’re situational robots. No emotions, no empathy, no nothing. Empty shells.
The inherent evil of Hamas was responded to by the only way possible-unleashing the dogs of war. Hamas must be obliterated as its depraved evil knows no bounds. Sadly, Hamas are using innocent Palestinians as shields and many will die and suffer. There are no grounds for sympathy or support for Hamas and those that do in any way are at best misinformed, and at worst aiding and abetting terrorism.
No doubt, Hamas is a monstrosity that must be destroyed.
Sadly, the Israeli government (against the wishes of the majority of it’s people) is choosing to attempt to accomplish this goal at the expense of basic decency. Monsters beget monsters, and we will sadly soon learn – as one would think we should have a hundred times over by now – that eradication campaigns don’t stamp out evil. They create more of it.
I can’t pretend to have the answers. But just as I thought the people in this country marching on legislatures with Palestinian flags on October 8th were, at BEST, horrifically misguided, and at worst terror sympathizers, I have a hard time stomaching the “oh well” attitude I’m instructed to be feeling every time another hospital or refugee camp gets bombed in retaliation, nor the claims of anti-semitism directed at anyone who simply doesn’t want to see any more dead children.
There is no good here.
Jason,
I get your points but I think a fair argument is that if Hamas did not deliberately base its command and control centers in public institutions, or right under public institutions, there would be no reason for the IDF to target a hospital, refugee camp or residential areas. We’ve seen at least several cases where rockets were fired from people’s backyards.
I’m not under any illusion that Palestinian civilians can prevent much less stop any of these choices made by Hamas. In short, any army hits its enemy where they happen to be concentrated. No question in this case that most of the Hamas leadership is holed up in the aforementioned areas. That is their quite deliberate choice and modus operandi.
It’s a fair argument. You won’t catch me defending Hamas.
But it remains, then, that the cost of defending the Holy Land is to sacrifice all that is holy.
My prayers are with you Warren, no-one wants to see what you’ve viewed but somehow I sadly feel we need to bear witness as you say.
I hope you find peace in the woods many will be thinking of you.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had speaking about family member veterans and one summed his dad’s observations of the big one in 1940s Europe “we saw things no-one should ever see and we came home and drank”
They never forgot and could not. I suspect you’ll want to reprogram that part of your memory but it will always be with you.
I know there is a good and just God, May that God Bless you everyday of your remaining time on this earth.