In a closed door screening of footage from the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, a senior Israel Defense Forces official told reporters at Israel’s consulate in Toronto that social media is another front in the country’s ongoing war against Hamas.
The senior IDF official, who spoke on the condition that he remain anonymous, told the room of approximately 20 invited journalists that Israel’s objective in showing the grizzly footage was to give everyone in the room “a better understanding of what our enemy looks like and why we fight.”
When asked about the ongoing propaganda war between Israel and Hamas, the IDF official told reporters that Israel had to learn from the Al-Ahli hospital explosion.
The official conceded that Israel was too slow to respond to what he described as the fake news and propaganda that immediately circulated on social media, which wrongly blamed Israel for intentionally bombing the hospital.
Israel has denied all involvement and blamed the explosion outside the hospital on a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket fired from inside Gaza.
The official reiterated that Israel wants the world to know “that Israel is not at war with the Palestinian people,” but rather with Hamas.
The 45-minute film was composed using footage from body cameras and intercepted calls from Hamas terrorists, bodycam footage from first responders, and video taken from the phones of victims.
The footage showed in full detail the senseless massacre, torture and barbarity toward innocent Israelis carried out by the hordes of invading Hamas terrorists that day.
Reporters were barred from bringing their phones or any recording devices into the room.
The majority of the film was made with footage collected by the terrorists themselves who were seen taking sadistic pleasure in their murderous rampage, filming it all for mass consumption.
In one intercepted call made from the phone of a killed Israeli woman between a Hamas terrorist and his father, the terrorist allegedly tells his father that he should be proud because his son “killed 10 Jews with his hands.”
Before the film screening, Israel consul general Idit Shamir held a press briefing with the IDF official and confirmed that 241 hostages, 35 of which are children – including ten who are under the age of five – are still being held by Hamas in Gaza.
Speaking on the ongoing humanitarian crisis inside Gaza, the official conceded that Israel is “having difficulties” getting civilians out of Gaza and stressed that the Israeli government is doing its best to extract foreign civilians from the strip.
One of the aspects that makes this challenging for the IDF, according to the official, is that Hamas soldiers have been caught embedding themselves among the large crowds of fleeing civilians trying to cross the border into Egypt.
When asked about Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, the official described the force’s operation as “slow, but effective” and confirmed that over 30 Israeli soldiers have died since the invasion into Gaza began.
“This is a war about Israel’s existence. No less than that,” the official said.
When asked about the slow response from the Israel Defense Forces on Oct. 7 and how they allowed such a catastrophic rampage to occur in such a heavily monitored country the official did not pass the buck.
“We have to be able to admit that we failed,” the official said to reporters.
Shamir said that Hamas’ actions on October 7 “are worse than ISIS,” calling Hamas “a genocidal terrorist group that would kill every Jew in the world if they could.”
