For Israel, the devastating Hamas assault on October 7 was in contrast to another in its scale and brutality. The duty of telling the story of a day now seared into the nationwide consciousness has fallen to a 41-year-old civilian volunteer who was moved to re-enlist within the navy within the wake of the assault.
Mattan Harel-Fisch is the editor liable for the 44-minute compilation of footage from bodycams, cellphones and different sources that has been proven to chose audiences from Tel Aviv to London and New York. And whereas few have seen it, the existence of the video has gone viral as experiences and rumours of its content material have unfold, a chronicle of the lifeless taking up a lifetime of its personal.
“This was Israel’s 9/11 second,” Harel-Fisch instructed the Monetary Instances from the military base in Tel Aviv the place he works. However “it wasn’t captured on this one [image of a] airplane blasting right into a constructing . . . which, horrific as that’s, it’s one thing that you just grasp the enormity of.
“Right here it was captured by a whole bunch and possibly 1000’s of various clips . . . throughout a large crime scene. I believe [this makes it] more durable to understand how monumental this occasion was.”
Harel-Fisch, a Tel Aviv tech entrepreneur, mentioned the video aimed to show to the world that the atrocities dedicated on October 7 did occur — dispelling the “ridiculous debate” over the concept the assaults have been staged or exaggerated — and to protect these occasions for posterity.
There may be additionally one other motive: justifying the ferocious Israeli marketing campaign towards Hamas.
“We would like the world to know [October 7] was one thing else,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli navy spokesman, mentioned on the first screening of the video final month, which was attended by the FT and a dozen different Israel-based journalists. “We would like the world to know that this isn’t simply one other spherical [of hostilities] between Israel and Gaza.”
Greater than 1,200 Israelis, together with kids, ladies and the aged, have been killed within the assault, in line with Israeli authorities, in what some officers have known as the deadliest day for Jewish folks because the Holocaust. Some 240 folks have been additionally taken hostage.
Israel responded with a large bombardment of Gaza that has been adopted by a floor invasion of the Palestinian enclave. Greater than 11,000 folks have been killed, in line with well being authorities within the Hamas-ruled territory, and the UN and others have warned of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.
The “video of horrors”, because it has come to be identified, will in all probability by no means be made absolutely public resulting from its graphic nature and to spare the households of these concerned. As a substitute, closed screenings have taken place — first in Israel for overseas media and diplomats, and extra just lately to officers and journalists in Europe, the Center East and the US, together with the White Home. The greater than 100 screenings to this point have turn into a significant a part of Israel’s message, even because it comes beneath rising worldwide stress to conform to a ceasefire in Gaza.
To keep away from leaks, viewers aren’t allowed to carry telephones into the room. In Israel, Harel-Fisch bodily brings his laptop to the screening location; overseas, a safe hyperlink is distributed to Israel’s navy attaché to open on his personal laptop computer.
A few of the journalists who’ve seen it, together with veteran struggle reporters, have mentioned it was essentially the most troublesome factor they’ve ever watched. Others, after being instructed of the content material, kept away from attending the screenings.
Harel-Fisch — a former director and editor of movies and commercials who can be a specialist in what is understood within the tech world as “consumer interplay and expertise” — has sewn collectively a compilation of uncooked, uncensored footage from each Israeli and Hamas sources. The impact is sparse, relentless, unforgiving.
There isn’t any narrative voiceover and no sound aside from what’s picked up on the video recordings — gunfire and explosions, the cheers and chatter of the Hamas fighters, the pleas and anguish of the Israeli victims.
“I sort of see myself as presenting to a jury,” mentioned Harel-Fisch. Circumstances dictate that the video be “factual, and it wants to remain that means . . . very primary, with a purpose to present that it’s not manipulated.”
The video largely runs chronologically by the day, and geographically by the shattered areas whose names have turn into notorious in Israel: Kibbutz Be’eri, the Nova music competition outdoors Re’im, the village of Netiv Haasara, and extra.
The motion begins with whooping Hamas gunmen behind a white pick-up inside Gaza racing in the direction of the Israeli border, filmed by considered one of their very own GoPros. Within the subsequent scene, an Israeli dashcam mutely data gunfire raining down on a automobile; the driving force is killed, as confirmed later by a distant freeway digicam.
Each time potential, Harel-Fisch mentioned, the identical incident is displayed from a number of views: a Hamas gunman’s bodycam displaying fighters capturing right into a shelter close to the Nova competition is adopted by Israeli cell phone footage taken inside the identical shelter, revealing injured and panicked younger folks and their cries for assist. Then Hamas cell phone video reveals survivors being hauled right into a pick-up truck to be taken again to Gaza.
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Harel-Fisch mentioned that though he already had an enormous quantity of footage, extra arrived each day, together with from police, first responders, and members of the family of these caught up within the violence. “They know I’m the individual,” he mentioned. “That’s my wake-up name each morning.”
Principally, the editor mentioned, he had been capable of “disconnect” from the fabric and “numb” his senses: “You need to while you do this type of work.”
“However there have been moments the place you’re urgent play . . . and also you perceive you’re now waiting for the primary time the final moments of somebody’s life . . . proper in the meanwhile they acquired murdered. I’ve seen them cowering away in corners, beneath pillows, behind automobiles, working away.”
Harel-Fisch is consistently updating and tweaking the video. There have been, by his rely, 12 variations to this point.
Essentially the most up-to-date included new video from a house surveillance system in Netiv Haasara. In it, a father and his two sons, nonetheless of their underwear within the early morning, flee to their yard bomb shelter. A Hamas operative seems and throws in a grenade, after which the daddy is blown clear out, lifeless. The bloodied boys stumble out and return to the home.
In the lounge’s surveillance system, now with sound, considered one of them screams: “Daddy’s lifeless, it’s not a prank.” Later, a Hamas operative enters, opens the fridge and takes a drink from a bottle.
For Harel-Fisch, such harsh visible imagery — of charred our bodies in mass bonfires, of infants with bullet wounds of their skulls, of an tried beheading of a inclined man with a backyard hoe — is exactly the explanation why he retains at it.
“The truth that folks maintain telling all of us [pathologists, search and rescue teams and many others] ‘we couldn’t do it’, you perceive that what you’re doing is vital,” he mentioned.
And what of the private toll for Harel-Fisch? “I believe our complete nation won’t ever be the identical. We’re a rustic in want of psychological therapy after this,” he mentioned. “It’s one thing that’s impacted everybody . . . I don’t suppose I’m any completely different.”
Earlier, on the gate to the military base the place Harel-Fisch works, a younger soldier requested a visiting journalist if he was there to observe the video. The journalist had already seen it, however had the soldier?
“No. And I received’t,” he replied. “I would like to have the ability to sleep at night time.”
