NBC News: Videos of Hamas “atrocities suggest that jihadism has evolved in chilling and perverse new ways”
The representatives of over 200 Israeli hostage families want the government to make an “everyone for everyone” hostage-for-prisoner exchange. The horrors of what Hamas did may be what holds Israel together in its goal of eliminating Hamas, which is not consistent with getting all the hostages back alive. That’s the hard truth.
At the time of my first post about the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel, the Israeli death toll had passed 300, and “dozens” were reported taken hostage to Gaza. With those numbers in mind, I suggested that the dual goals of returning the hostages and completely defeating Hamas were not consistent:
The hostages held in Gaza will not be recovered alive unless Israel gives major concessions and leaves Hamas in power. While of course Israel wants to get them back alive, Israeli military options are severely constrained if that is the goal. Hamas has grown comfortable taking hostages and using them as shields to temper Israeli military responses. The goals of toppling Hamas and getting the hostages back alive are not consistent. Israel faces a tough choice.
Now the death toll exceeds 1400, the number of hostages are over 200, and the brutality and savagery of Hamas, with gruesome physical and sexual defilement even of dead bodies, has shocked Israelis and the civilized part of the civilized world (i.e. excluding western leftists and Islamists). We’ve documented Hamas’ crimes in dozens of posts (see bottom of this post for the full list).
We covered how international journalists were able to review terrorist bodycams and Israeli dashcams and surveillance cams, to see for themselves how cruel the Palestinian terrorist members and civilians who crossed the border with them were, “I just saw indescribable, raw footage of Hamas’ massacre along with 100 other international journalists”.
Those same videos were shown to American reporters in New York. NBC News reports on what it witnessed:
The brutality and elation of Hamas militants as they killed Israeli civilians — including babies, young children and the elderly — is evident in an Israeli government compilation of videos shown to two dozen journalists in New York on Friday.
The videos, which were aired for the first time outside of Israel, consist mostly of GoPro, cellphone and dashcam footage recorded by the attackers themselves.
Israeli officials said they showed the compilation to President Joe Biden when he visited Israel on October 18th. They also showed it to a group of journalists in Israel, including NBC’s Raf Sanchez, on Wednesday. The atrocities depicted suggest that jihadism has evolved in chilling and perverse new ways.
The NBC News report continues:
Throughout the roughly 45 minutes of footage, the attackers cheered as they killed unarmed people. Hamas members shot dead civilians in their living rooms, lit houses on fire, and hurled a grenade at a father trying to protect his three children, killing the father and one child, and partially blinding another. After civilians were shot dead in the car, Hamas militants pulled their limp bodies from the vehicle, got inside and drove away.
The footage showed Hamas members engaged in the type of butchery depicted in ISIS videos. In one scene, a Hamas member asks another fighter to film him as he fires rounds into the head of an Israeli civilian who appears to already be dead. In another, a group of Hamas terrorits argue over who gets to cut off the head of a Thai man who was working in Israel. One of them then struggles to chop off his head with a hoe.
The footage includes photographs of two babies that had been shot in the head and two infants who appear to have been burnt to a char….
Videos showed Hamas fighters returning Gaza with Israeli hostages and corpses. In one, the body of an Israeli soldier is dumped on a street in Gaza, and Palestinian men stomp and kick it.
In other videos, there are signs of rape. Footage shot by Israeli first responders shows the corpse of a young woman who is naked from the waist down. Israeli officials said they also found evidence that some women who were raped and killed had their legs broken.
Israeli first responders were initially barred from taking videos or photographs of the dead out of respect for their families, officials said. But a decision was made to film what they found in order to preserve evidence of atrocities. Israeli officials said the video compilation is the most comprehensive visual evidence of war crimes carried out by Hamas.
Both a virtue and a weakness of Israeli society is the overwhelming concern for Israelis captured by Hamas or other terrorist groups.
In 2011, after his family mounted a public pressure campaign that ended up almost paralyzing Israeli society, the government agreed to exchange over 1000 terrorists in its custody for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israeli society paid a very steep price for that exchange. By 2018, over one-third of Palestinian terrorists freed in the 2011 hostage deal returned to terror. Among the freed terrorists were almost the entire present Gaza military leadership of Hamas responsible for planning the October 7 attack. Thousands of Israelis died to recover one Israeli hostage.
Will Israeli society succumb to the pressure now that there are over 200 hostages, including babies and children? Already there are signs of a pressure campaign building.
Hamas has offered to exchange the 200 plus hostages for upwards of 10,000 terrorists in Israeli prisons. Representatives of the Israeli hostage families want the government to take the deal:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Saturday with representatives of families whose loved ones are being held captive in Gaza, and pledged that Israel “will exhaust every possibility” to bring about their return.
The representatives urged Netanyahu to agree to an “everyone for everyone” prisoner exchange with the Hamas terror group, trading Palestinians incarcerated in Israel on security offenses for the hundreds who were abducted from Israel earlier this month during a devastating attack by Hamas.
At the same time, at least 20 vigils of support for the families of the captives and memorials for those killed were held around the country on Saturday night. Many pushed the theme of a prisoner exchange to secure freedom for the captives held in Gaza. Some of the gatherings featured heavy criticism of Netanyahu.
One can feel for the families and the hostages, but also understand that such a hostage-for-prisoner exchange would mean thousands more Israelis would die in the future, and Hamas would remain in power.
The horrors of what Hamas did may be what holds Israel together in its goal of eliminating Hamas, which is not consistent with getting all the hostages back alive. That’s the hard truth.
Prior Posts:
- Hamas Savagery Worse Than ISIS – Reports of Mass Rapes, Abusing and Beheading Bodies of Israeli Soldiers
- At Kibbutz Be’eri, Hamas Slaughtered Over 100, Kidnapped Dozens, and Executed At Least Four Captives
- Kibbutz Kfar Aza: Hamas Murdered 40 Babies, Many Decapitated
- Hamas Goal In Capturing Jewish Women, Children, and Babies Was To “Dirty Them, To Rape Them”, Admits Terrorist
- Hamas “raped the women then they burned them alive”
- Kibbutz Nir Oz: Hamas Murdered A Grandmother, Then Posted The Murder On Her Facebook Page
- Hamas Battle Plan Ordered Terrorists to Target Elementary Schools, “Kill as Many as Possible” and “Capture Hostages”
- Hamas Barbarism “Worse Than What I Saw With ISIS” – U.S. Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin
- Terrorist Captive: Admits Hamas “cut off their heads” after killing Israelis, and “raping and whoring” of children
- VIDEO: Gaza “Civilians” Loot Israeli Kibbutz Be’eri During Hamas Massacre
- “Hundreds of dead people in Israel are still unidentifiable because of what Hamas terrorists did to their bodies.”
- New Website Documents All War Crimes of Hamas Since October 7th
- Israeli Defense Forces Release Graphic Video of Hamas Attacks on Israel
- “Evidence on Display at Israel’s Forensic Pathology Center Confirms Hamas’ Atrocities”
- “I just saw indescribable, raw footage of Hamas’ massacre along with 100 other international journalists”
- Multiple Hamas Terrorists: We Became Like ISIS, Admit To Beheadings, Stomping Heads, Sex With Dead Women
- ‘Your Son Killed Jews!’: IDF Releases Audio of Hamas Terrorist Bragging About Murdering Jewish Family
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Comments
I think I missed the the peaceful and certainly not Jew hating old “Jihadism.” Remind me, when was that exactly?
I’m pretty sure that ended before Mo became warlord of Medina.
Indeed. Once Mo could take his revenge on the Jews and Christians who rejected his claim of being a prophet the Quran radically changed, almost as if Allah was his mouthpiece. Numerous Hadith attest to the phenomenon of Allah appearing to grant Mo’s every wish, though it is blasphemous in Islam to outright suggest that Allah was Mo’s sock puppet.
In many ways this massacre seems performative, like a macabre tiktok challenge. Decent quality cameras on our cell phones are ubiquitous today in a way they were not less than two decades ago. In many ways the introduction of the IPhone and other brands of cell phone has upended our social norms.
IMO, the cell phones seem to encourage narcissism and voyeurism which serves to isolate people from each other IRL v their internet presence. Many people seem to care more about ‘likes’, the # of followers/subs they have and the dopamine hit from validation of strangers online than the people in IRL.
Combine that, the worst of modern Western cultural libertine excess, with the culturally reinforced hatred taught to the Hamas goons at home, in school and nearly everywhere else in their existence and this sort of ‘selfie’ style massacre seems inevitable. Probably gonna get worse as the next round of butchers tries to outdo the last.
It is performative, as Islam conquers by the pen as well as the sword. Demoralizing the enemy is as valuable as killing them.
I prefer that they be killed, holding terrorists in prison is a waste resources, letting them go is insane. I understand the pain of families, but there will be less pain in the long run by eradicating terrorists.
This display of barbarity is classic Islam. This is the war of the Prophet and people in the 600s experienced worse. The only way that Islam knows how to spread the faith or get their way is by death and destruction. As far as I am concerned, they are non human. If the KKK was still active and espoused any of the beliefs of Islam, we would wipe them off the map.
How is this for a compromise? They want 10,000 freed for 200 hostages. For every hostage who dies, release 50 from prison via an airplane over Gaza.
Chilling and perverse for sure. But certainly not new. But thanks for noticing anyway, NBC.
Jihadism is just back at full throat…. NBC needs to brush up on Islam and its history. Nothing “new”…. just re-empowered.
“Evolved”?
Did they really use THAT word?
What do they need? A dictionary or a new soul?
I can’t blame the parents; I would be doing the same thing.
It must be especially horrible for them after seeing the savagery and torture Hamas inflicted on those killed.
Israel is between a rock and a hard place, as usual.
NBC videos suggest that NBC is a bunch of liars that can’t seem to wrap their heads around the barbarism of a group of people they see as oppressed. This just in: Although not always populated by the best people the Crusades were almost certainly justified.
The Crusades got stupid near the end, especially when they destroyed the Byzantine Empire, a then Christian power, and delivered it to the loving care of Islam, whose followers took its cities and butchered its population (killing the men and taking the women for sex slaves).
You’d have difficulty convincing any Jew that the Crusades were justified. 1096 is still remembered as one of the blackest years in Jewish history, along with 1492, 1648-49, and 1939-45. The prayer in memory of the martyrs of 1096 is still said in most Ashkenazi synagogues almost every week.
You said it better than I could..thank you.
There were multiple crusades. I’m not excusing anyone’s excess but 1096 was not sanctioned by the Church. Unlike some religions, Christianity is a religion of peace. And not to make any unwarranted connections, but the massacre of 1096 toke place in the Rhineland and was also called “German Crusade of 1096”
The First was fully justified Milhouse. I am discussing the Big Picture. If you don’t like the First Crusade then promote the Islamification of the West now. The vilification of the Jews in the West has always been theologically bankrupt.
It had nothing to do with preventing Islamification of the West. It was all about Christianizing Israel by the sword.
Here we depart in our views of history Milhouse. By the way… how well would the Jews have fared if Martel and others hadn’t stopped Islam at Vienna or pushed the Moors out of Spain? As for martyrs…. 2023 needs to be put into every prayer of remembrance… for the true enemy of the Saturday and Sunday people. “Never again” may have become too easy to say without meaning it… well… now it’s important who puts actions into words and knows who has their back.
alaskabob
Martel died almost 800 years prior to the 1st Siege of Vienna (1529) much less the 2nd in 1683. Martel is unquestionably responsible for the victory of the West at Tours in 732.
Neither the battle of Tours nor the 1st/2nd Siege of Vienna are part of the Crusader era.
How would Jews have fared in Europe had it been Moslem rather than Christian? No worse than they did fare. Overall, the Jewish experience in Christendom and dar-al-Islam has been much the same. In both there were good times and bad times; toleration and persecution; prosperity and ruin. The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman and his immediate successors was wonderful and hospitable; but so was Poland from the 12th through the 16th century.
The crusades have a very complicated history. Most people focus on the crusades in the Levant but ignore the crusades in France and the Baltic among other places. After the fall of Acre there were over 3 dozen crusades many purely for politically motives v; Frederick III, the Colonna Cardinals, The Catalan Company to name a few. There were about a dozen +/- crusades within/among the Nations/leaders of the Christian West that had jack and squat to do with Islam.
Basic point is the crusades were not exclusively or even mostly about working for the triumph of Christians over an expansionist Islam. In many cases it was about raw political and financial benefit with the added benefit of ‘indulgences’ granted to crusaders for their past sins and those performed during the crusade. That and loot with a good deal of rape and slaughter as well. For every leader that pledged support others made calculated decisions not to do so in order to wrest advance out of their rivals absence or their expenditure of blood and treasure. There was no ‘united Christian West’ good guys v ‘bad guy Muslims’ it’s way more complicated than that.
It must be remembered that the Crusades were originally a reaction to the invasion of Islam and its disruptive influence. The concept was then used to get other religious factions in line, a wrong idea.
No, they weren’t. They were an attempt to invade and Christianize Israel, which had been Moslem for centuries.
Should Spain have just accepted the Muslim invasion? After all they’d been there since about 711 AD.
Spain was Moslem. And, other than the Almohades period, Spain was a much better place under Moslem rule than under Christian rule. The Christian conquest of Spain was absolutely a terrible and evil thing.
The 1st Crusade was a call by the Pope/Catholic Church to make an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It wasn’t about pushing Islam out of Western Europe. Though this ‘people’s crusade’ did manage to kill and terrorize Jewish communities in Europe.
People are just human and many humans are petty, jealous, vindictive, easily frightened by the boogeyman the narrative of the day is pushing and prone to use that boogeyman as an excuse to kill them, rape them and take their property. IMO, it is historically inaccurate to romanticize the Crusades as a whole. There were plenty of truly heroic deeds done and times where people made truly noble sacrifices within the Crusades.
At root the Crusades were medieval warfare waged with a religious excuse/justification. War isn’t in itself a good thing and slapping the approval of religion onto it doesn’t change that. War should be always be the last realistic choice b/c war is incredibly destructive and wasteful. People are killed, maimed, raped, orphaned in warfare, even modern warfare.
HAMAS is hell-bent on genocide. That’s why they set the “price” of the prisoners so high.
It’s all over their documents, and all over their actions. It’s probably time to take them at their word.
What’s to stop Israel from trading 10,000 or however many prisoners for hostages, and, then waging all-out war on Hamas, after their safe return?
Sun-Tzu wrote that “All warfare is deceit.”
Their own foolishness and fifth columnists. Even in a place that should be as based as Israel you see fools pushing the imaginary notion of “moderate Islam”.
I should state that the proper word in this quote is “deception,” not “deceit.”
Be aware. This is what is intended for America. not just by the Islamic savages, but by all of academia, the Democratic Party and many, many fellow travelers. Look into the eyes of Garland. He is insane with hatred. And he is by no means alone. Listen and read the BLM material. Review Omar, Presley and Tlaib.’s statements and stances: the are filled with bigotry and hatred.
Evolved? No, Islamic jihad is what it has always been, ruthless and unspeakably cruel, exactly as Muhammad himself acted. Muhammad is the highest example of Islamic conduct, according to the Quran. The math intersecting these two things is obvious to all but the willfully blind and some progressives. But I repeat myself. The other progressives know what’s up and don’t care, or foolishly think they can use Islam to deliver the west to their control.
Israel should say there is nothing to negotiate until after the hostages are released, all of them
Atrocities need to be documented and viewed by a wide audience, in a year the Palestinian backers will say it never happened and it’s Israeli Propaganda.
Huh? Which idiot at NBC came up with that? I see no evolution at all. How these people behaved does not differ in any significant way from how their grandparents and great-grandparents behaved throughout the 20th century, particularly in 1920, ’29, ’36, and ’47-’49,
Remember who was responsible for that disastrous decision. Binyamin Netanyahu. He knew that his decision would result in hundreds or thousands of casualties; he almost openly acknowledged it. But he could not withstand the political pressure, the threat to his reelection. So how is he going to say no this time? How is he going to explain to these families why their loved ones are not worth as much as Shalit was?
Of course the precedent was set long before that, in 1985, with the utterly reckless Jibril exchange in 1995, under Shimon Peres, which also led to hundreds or thousands of casualties in subsequent years. But Netanyahu could have disavowed and condemned that precedent and vowed not to repeat it, if he hadn’t done the same thing himself, on an even bigger scale.
This is why the last time the IDF went into Gaza there were reports of soldiers taking suicide pills with them, or leaving wills demanding that if they were captured they should not be ransomed.
And this is just one of the many reasons why I keep disabusing posters here who imagine that Netanyahu is some sort of strong man, a hard right-winger. I keep informing them that he is Israel’s Lindsay Graham. He talks a good talk, but he has no spine.
The sad part is that Netanyahu IS the “hard right winger” when compared to Labor politicians. I will never understand the attraction of Leftism for Jewish people, both ethnic (only) Jews and many observant Jews (certainly Reform Jews at a minimum, though some might find Reform Jew and Observant Jew to be an oxymoron). But what do I know, I’m just a Goy.
When compared to the Democrats, Lindsay Graham is a hard right-winger. When compared to anyone else he is not. The same applies to Netanyahu. He’s got the rhetoric down, but whenever push comes to shove, he folds. Who gave Hevron away in the first place?
Socialism is a substitute for religion. And in the case of Reform it became their religion.
Both a virtue and a weakness of Israeli society is the overwhelming concern for Israelis captured by Hamas or other terrorist groups.
It isn’t weakness.. It is just human nature. That being said, I agree, I don’t see this ending well for the hostages.
The following is a true story. The CIA station chief was kidnapped and tortured to death. The video was sent to the embassy. At the same time a Russian diplomat was kidnapped too. The US response was to bombard the homes and neighborhoods of the Hezbollah terrorists that went after the station chief. This led to the barracks bombing. The Russians grabbed a male family member of one of the kidnappers. They sent his balls in a box to the kidnappers. The Russian was released unharmed. The moral of the story, You had better be prepared to be just as brutal as those who brutalize you. Ask any Marine still alive about combat in the Pacific theater.
Someone needs to tell these families that their kidnapped relatives are as good as dead already.
As cruel as it is, there can be no exchanges. That will only encourage future efforts to kidnap Israeli civilians.
I would find out where the hostages are and wipe out the area as quickly and hopefully, least painfully for them… clear the deck and proceed with the war. From the River to the Sea… “Palestine will be free”… of “Palestinians”.
This is a crucial moment in Israel’s survival and a lesson to the free world about hostage-taking. It will take a very strong leader who will absorb the slings and arrows thrown at him to make the decision that hostages will not be bargained for nor will the destruction of Hamas be impeded in any way because of them. The msm will depict him as a Hitler and a cold heartless killer but that decision must be made. Look no further than the disastrous decision made by Biden to pay 6 billion dollars for 6 hostages to the number one terrorist nation on the planet! We can hope that luck will prevail but plan on the worst for the hostages, but no bargaining, EVER!
And Netanyahu is not that leader. Gantz is even worse. Bennett could have been that leader, but he screwed the pooch and nobody wants him now.
If Hamas’ military capabilities are not destroyed to the last weapon and possibly to the last man, the situation will just repeat. It may anyway from future births. As in WW II, there must be a visibly destroyed loser here. Sadly, that is just not consistent with getting more than a handful of hostages back alive.