By Jimmy Quinn
Friday, December 07, 2023
The footage of Hamas’s atrocities screened at Harvard
University this week was “much worse” than the version that was initially screened for journalists
and political leaders starting in late October, as Israel races against time to
get the word out about what happened before widespread apologism for the
massacre sets in.
For weeks, Israeli officials have screened a 43-minute
video of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities in a campaign to combat rampant denialism
of the crimes. The first screening took place in Jerusalem that month, and it
has since been shown to audiences across the U.S. and elsewhere. As part of
that campaign, Israel brought similar, but updated, footage to Harvard on
Monday, for an event hosted by the school’s Chabad.
“It’s worse; it’s much worse,” an IDF official said of
the latest version of the atrocity video during a briefing with journalists in
New York this week.
Although the official did not elaborate on the specific
nature of what made this update worse than the footage screened previously, he
said that it is now 46 minutes long and that it has been updated “because we
are receiving more and more information as we go.” (Though many government
agencies are involved in decisions surrounding the screenings, the IDF compiles
and edits the footage, this official said.)
National Review was at the first U.S.
screening of the footage, in New York, for a group journalists in October. The
video has since been shown in Congress, at the U.N., and at a number of other
venues for civil-society audiences.
That video compiles horrific footage taken on October 7
from a variety of sources, including security cameras, mobile devices, and
GoPro cameras worn by Hamas terrorists. It shows the terrorist group’s massacre
of civilians in Israel’s south, at the kibbutzes along the Gaza strip and the
Nova music festival. Israeli officials have explained that they will not
release the video in its entirety out of respect for the victims’ families.
Harvard is the first college at which any of this footage
has been screened so far, and the IDF official explained that 300 people from
different student groups, university administration, and faculty were present
for it. Although Harvard president Claudia Gay was already in Washington in
advance of this week’s now-infamous congressional hearing, Harvard’s
undergraduate college dean joined the screening, according to the official.
Harvard has been a hotbed of Hamas apologism since
October 7, with more than 30 student groups blaming Israel for the mass
slaughter of civilians in an open letter the night of the mass killings. And
following a bungled response to a question about students’ calls for genocide
of Jews at Tuesday’s hearing, Gay has faced widespread calls for her ouster.
Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund executive who has vocally
criticized Harvard’s leadership over its handling of October 7–related campus
incidents, was also at the screening on Monday, the Harvard Crimson reported.
“We understand as time goes by, we learned this sadly
also in our history, that very fast, we’re seeing how people are questioning
what happened on the seventh of October and misguiding, misdirecting. It’s
misinformation, disinformation—it’s both,” the IDF official said.
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