Show the Video, Israel

Just consider what a massacre of Jews on October 7 launched:

• Downtown London has become a no-go zone for Jews every weekend.
• Jewish teachers have been being chased by frenzied student mobs through the halls of New York schools.
• Jewish university students have been barricaded in auditoriums and libraries by braying mobs.
• Synagogues and Jewish hospitals in the US and Canada have become the targets of screaming protesters.
• Jewish-owned restaurants and businesses have been vandalized, and their patrons have been threatened with violence.
• Jewish artists have had their shows cancelled or protested.
• Rallies featuring Nazi imagery and celebrating the events of October 7 have taken and continue to take place in Times Square and on the streets of New York City.

And all this has been in response to a genocidal attack on Jews on October 7.

October 7 was the final crank of a jack-in-the-Pandora’s-box of Leftist and Islamist antisemitism that has been bubbling under the surface for years.

The Hamas pogrom of October 7 is no longer just an existential threat to the Jewish state. It is an existential threat to every nation in the civilized world. And the civilized world, from academia to politicians to law enforcement, has proven incapable of or unwilling to forcefully stamp this evil out.

Which is why Israel must do what few others in power are able or willing to do: directly confront the global protesters, those who demand a ceasefire to let Hamas win and live to massacre another day, and those spineless politicians and academic administrators who appease the radicals, with what it is they all are supporting.

No more pairing “antisemitism” with “Islamophobia.” No more uncritically believing stories about alleged IDF or Jewish settler atrocities to balance the scales and provide a “both sides do it” relief valve for those who side with Hamas.

Israel rightly has been sensitive in how it has shown the 47-minute video of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities—a video comprised of footage taken by the Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians and “journalists” themselves. Those Hamas butchered on film are parents, children, siblings, extended family, and friends. Every person who has seen the video has been deeply shaken, saying it is far worse that they imagined it would be.

But the Jewish people—and if history is any guide, the world—is lurching toward yet another catastrophe as waves of pathologically antisemitic and anti-Western immigrants crash over the West, finding support among progressive leftist radicals in politics, academia, and media.

As pressure mounts on Israel to desist from its just and righteous war, it must remind the world how precisely this war began. What the Hamas barbarians and the Gazan civilians who followed them into Israel did on October 7.

Force the Squad, the maladjusted kids taking over campuses, and the sympathetic or cowardly administrations of America’s universities to confront it all. Just as Eisenhower marched German civilians through the concentration camps after American forces liberated them to confront the evil done in their name.

Force the Islamists and their fellow travelers screaming at synagogues in New Jersey and Jewish hospitals in Canada and taking over European capitals every weekend to watch Hamas burn children alive, throw hand grenades into safe houses, and shoot point-blank teenagers begging for their lives. Just as American authorities forced German civilians into movie theaters to watch footage of what the Nazis had done.

Force UN Women, the #MeToo “Believe All Women” hypocrites, and the Code Pink ghouls to watch Hamas barbarians rape women, murder pregnant women, and sexually mutilate female corpses.

If the axis of international progressive leftist goblins wants to continue to back Hamas and demand Israel end its righteous war of self-defense, let them do it knowing the world has seen with its own eyes what they support and celebrate.

If the Squad still wants to defend and run interference for Hamas in Congress after the world has seen the video, let them. A fully informed world will better see them for the gargoyles that they are.

If the kids and faculty on campus still want to demand Israel let Hamas survive and to harass Jews on campus to make their point, let the world know what it is they are demanding Israel allow to happen again. A world that sees these protests after seeing the video will far better understand the violence, death, and barbarity inherent in the academic left’s cracked DEI-driven oppressor/oppressed worldview.

If the Democrats in Congress, including Majority Leader Schumer, still think a Palestinian polity capable of the barbarity of October 7 deserves a state and that Israel should accept such a state, let them make that argument after everyone in the world has seen with their own eyes these horrors. And let the world see them willing to make this argument after they know the world has seen these horrors.

It is no longer enough for Israel to show the October 7 video to journalists, governments, and other select audiences. Everyone must see what Hamas and the Gazan civilians who followed Hamas into Israel did on October 7 and the glee and sheer ecstasy they brought to their butchery.

We know it works. Postwar Germans, confronted with the images of the Nazi camps, recoiled in horror and vigorously expunged antisemitism from the public square. To this day, Germany aggressively enforces legal protections against antisemitism. Germany, admirably, has taken the admonition of “never again” seriously.

Once again, the Jews are the fire bell in the night. Once again, the Jewish people have been thrust into the unwanted role of victims of deadly ideologies that make no secret of their desire to inflict on the world what they first inflicted on the Jews. Once again, Jews are forced to make terrible choices: hide the video to protect the victims and their families, or show the video to prevent untold numbers of victims to come.

The time has come, Israel. Release the October 7 video to the world.

Michael E. Ginsberg is Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia’s 11^th Congressional District Committee and a member of the RPV’s Executive Committee.