In a Hollywood show, footage of Hamas killing Israelis
“All these people dancing in the streets on Jewish cemeteries are the ones who should see this movie, because if they were of any other race this wouldn’t happen,” said actress Julianna Margulies, who helped create the Holocaust Education School Partnership. With the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. “Do they not remember that the Jews fought alongside them and died for them?”
The 43-minute film was extracted from Hamas attackers’ body cameras, dash cams, traffic cameras, CCTV, mobile phones and social media accounts of victims, soldiers and emergency medical workers. The film includes disturbing scenes of people being shot dead while driving along the highway, hiding in their homes and trying to escape across an open field. There are still images of burned bodies, of bloodied teenagers piled into the backs of trucks, of lifeless children in pajamas (their faces have been blurred to protect their identities).
Scheffler said the film can’t cover all the horror — given the hundreds of hours of footage — and represents less than 10% of the deaths.
Before the screening, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, warned that the film “will change the way you look at the Middle East,” because it contains “barbarism and cruelty the likes of which you have never seen before.”
As they watched, the audience gasped, winced and cried. At least two people left the theater before the movie ended, and one man shouted after the movie ended, “Show the kids!” Show the rapes!” Before security escorts them.
Among those wiping away tears was Cristina Pascucci, the news anchor and former war correspondent who last month joined the race to succeed Dianne Feinstein in the US Senate. She said she hoped the film would stimulate “understanding of the horrors of that day and appreciation for the lives that were lost.”
Pascucci, 38, said she only discovered that her grandmother was Jewish when she was in her 20s. Last month, she joined a humanitarian mission to Israel.
“This doesn’t have to be a polarizing issue,” she said. “You can condemn the killing of innocent Palestinians at the same time” and condemn the killing of Jews.
Several news reports said that Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress who starred in Wonder Woman, was among those encouraging people to attend. Gadot did not respond to messages seeking comment and was not present at the show, although her husband, Jaron Varsano, was in attendance.
The event was one of two organized by Greenberg and Melissa Zuckerman, a publicist, with support from the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. The other happened in New York the night before. Zuckerman confirmed that among those present in the hall in Los Angeles were Yinon Kriz, Chairman and CEO of Mattel; David Ellison, founder and CEO of Skydance Media; and Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast.
Yossi Klein-Halevy, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, said in a phone interview from Israel that he was “never a supporter of atrocity footage,” but that “this footage needs to be shown.”
The film was followed by a video of Broadway stars singing the song “Bring Him Home” from the play “Les Misérables,” in support of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Many attendees spoke about the Holocaust and World War II. “We are the remnants of the pogroms,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the Wiesenthal Center, noting that it was the eve of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in 1938 when the Nazis smashed Jewish storefronts, killed Jews and sent thousands into detention. Camps.
Many of them said they felt sad that it seemed necessary to show and watch such disturbing footage.
“There should be enough eyewitness accounts, funerals, shivs and bereaved families,” said Rabbi Sharon Bruce, founder and chief rabbi of Ikar, a Los Angeles congregation. “But it seems that is not enough. So there must be a historical record created, and these videos are part of creating that record.”
