JERUSALEM, Israel – It's been weeks since the most brutal and widespread terror attack in Israel's history, with more than 1,200 Israelis murdered and 240 taken hostage on October 7th.
To document this massacre, the Israeli Defense Forces invited the international media to witness the evidence firsthand.
While the release of the hostages is taking center stage currently, many know it's important to remember why the war began.
IDF Major and spokesperson Libby Weiss indicated that the intervening events since October 7th prompted the IDF to release the video.
"Time passes and memories are short, and it's our job to make sure that reporters and the public understand why we need to target Hamas and why we can't live with a terror organization that wants to do what they did on October 7th, Weiss stated, and added, "why we can't live next door to them."
Journalists recently watched raw footage filmed by Hamas terrorists on their bodycams and cell phones. The videos uncovered the murder, torture, rape and kidnapping of Israeli citizens from their homes. The videos were also from the cell phones of their victims, from security cameras, victims' dashboard cameras, and from first responders' cell phones.
"We see what happens when Hamas is in a position of power to commit terror against Israelis," Weiss explained. "We see what they did. We know that this is what they wanted to do. And we have to make sure they can never do this again. And I certainly – after seeing this this footage of what took place – I think it's so clear. I can't imagine anybody in the world would want to live or would feel comfortable living next door to a terror organization like Hamas, knowing what they want to do and knowing what they did."
Weiss talked about the journalists' responses to what they saw.
"I think horror, devastation," she said. "I think there's something that gets to your core when you when you see such depravity and when you see such cruelty. and understand the loss and and the massacre that happened."
She also pointed out the pitfall of moral comparison between the action of Hamas and Israel.
"I think drawing some sort of moral equivalence is either completely detached from reality or a complete lie," she insisted. "Hamas terrorists intentionally targeted civilians, and the sick pleasure they took in slaughtering children, teenagers, the way that they stomped on bodies, the way that they treated the dead – I mean I cannot see how there is any way to draw a moral equivalence.
We ask the Palestinians to evacuate from the city of Gaza before we did anything. This is a very different way of acting," Weiss noted.
The IDF showed video of air dropping leaflets, giving advanced warning of strikes to civilians in Gaza, and also of the IDF's assistance in evacutating infants from the nursery at Al Shifa Hospital, used by Hamas as their military headquarters.
Weiss declared, "We are making countless efforts to minimize the impact on civilians in the Gaza Strip. And civilians in Israel didn't get any of that. They were the target, they were the target of what took place on October 7th.
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