No Excuse for War Crimes: The Emotional Propaganda of the 'Bearing Witness' Reviews

Photo: NewsNation

Chris Cuomo is the latest high profile news host to testify to the horrors of the October 7th Hamas attacks as compiled in the 47-minute video, Bearing Witness. The film, produced by the Israeli military and initially screened for The New York Times editorial staff, the White House, and Western intelligence agencies like the CIA and MI5, is a collection of explicit videos and photos documenting the atrocities which occurred on 10/7. It is only through these sources that the general public has been made aware of the film’s contents, as it is yet to be shown to public audiences.

Cuomo’s impressions of the footage include the following excerpt from his monologue:

Merely murdering innocents was the least of it. [Hamas] enjoyed mutilating and went back and celebrated in the streets with heads and bloody corpses as trophies. This was absolute genocide. That is a word that people are misapplying, and this is where it does apply.

Even more important to the terrorists apparently was what they left behind: Charred reminders of a Holocaust, the obvious desire to see as many Jews utterly destroyed as possible. There were dead women with bloody groins and twisted, disfigured legs that the Israel Defense Forces says are part of a pattern of rape and torture.

The 47 minutes show a small fraction of the dead, but it makes it very clear that Hamas wanted war. This was not the irrepressible angst of the desperate who want freedom, who want better, nor certainly want anything approximating peace. They wanted the Jews to know that they want them to burn — again.

I now understand better what is fueling Israel. This is not tit-for-tat. They are fueled by the deepest fears of genocide because those fears are real.

“I now understand better what is fueling Israel,” he says. Here we see the true purpose of this secret snuff film that only authorities of truth and wisdom like Chris Cuomo are allowed to watch. The point of Bearing Witness is not simply to document Hamas’ atrocities on October 7th, but to make us angrier about the events of that day, and therefore less angry about the Israeli response. This emotional manipulation must be resisted, as it’s nothing more than yet another cynical attempt to rationalize a genocide as it’s perpetrated in broad daylight for all to see.

Put Up or Shut Up

While we certainly can’t deny the film’s footage itself or its validity, we should all have learned by now never to take any claim from our media or the Israeli state for granted without vetting it for ourselves. To Cuomo’s credit, he himself argues that Bearing Witness should be made available to everyone.

Since October 7th, Israel has repeatedly lied about the attack itself as well as their reaction to it. The initial death toll was said to be 1,400, which later was adjusted to 1,200. We’ve since learned that 373 of those killed were not civilians, but Israeli security forces. Additionally, it’s been reported and confirmed by police investigations that Israel’s apache helicopters killed some of their own citizens at the Nova music festival in an effort to strike Hamas fighters. Perhaps most famously, Netanyahu’s office claimed to have both seen photos of beheaded babies from 10/7 and shared them with President Biden. Israel later admitted it could not confirm such events took place.

Israel also insisted that Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest and most important medical facility, was being used as a Hamas command center, and that Hamas tunnels were accessible from inside the building. An independent investigation by The Washington Post refuted both claims, going as far as to write, “There is no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.”

Again, none of this is meant to deny whatever brutality is depicted in Bearing Witness. But absent its presentation to the public, we shouldn’t blindly accept it either. If Israel’s concern is that we’re too weak-stomached to handle it, we should remind them that our social media feeds are already flooded with the grisliest and most graphic videos of Palestinian carnage. Is their fear that we’ll be more triggered by images of Israeli victims than Palestinian ones? If not, there’s no reason to keep the materials secret.

About Numbers

Assuming the full authenticity of every frame in Bearing Witness, none of it legitimizes the Israeli response, which has been a world-historic atrocity against the 1.9 million Gazans who have been displaced, and the more than 20,000 killed since 10/7, most of whom are women and children.

Cuomo concludes his editorial by saying:

Because seeing what the terror group in charge of Gaza did to the Jews and has promised to do again, how does Israel risk being vulnerable to those who do not honor agreements and have made it very clear they don’t want peace? They want to burn and kill the Jews.

On the suggestion to bomb less and use commandos: How does that not suggest to Israel that they have to do this in a way that Hamas can kill more of them and reduce their advantage? Stop bombing so aid gets in — will Hamas allow it in? They have a history of doing the opposite.

It is not about numbers. It is about Israel being shown its worst fears can be realized because they were.

“It is not about numbers,” he insists.

Except it is - of course - “about numbers.”

Here, again, are some of the numbers:

Approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed on 10/7, 373 of whom were security officers. In response, over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed. By Israel’s own admission, a majority of casualties in Gaza have been civilians. The United Nations has found most noncombatant victims in Gaza to be women and children. The WHO Director General has said a child has been killed, on average, every 10 minutes in Gaza. As of earlier this week, 69 journalists have been killed in Gaza, with 3 more reported missing and 20 more reported arrested. Almost 90% of Gazans have been displaced from their homes, and their entire population now faces a hunger crisis and famine risk.

Yes, these numbers do matter. In fact, it’s a sober accounting of such numbers that so clearly demonstrates the collective punishment of the Gazan people, a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions. It’s that simple.

No Excuse for War Crimes

No matter how horrific the acts of Hamas on 10/7, Israel’s refusal to limit its own violent response to those who committed those attacks is - quite obviously - a war crime. To say, as Cuomo has, that watching the Bearing Witness film has helped him to “understand better what is fueling Israel,” is to excuse Israel’s atrocities by compelling us to empathize with the collective emotional trauma of its state and its citizenry.

Now, as someone who believes all violence is tragic and all war is obscene, I must emphasize that my intention is not to minimize or dismiss the suffering of Israeli noncombatants on October 7th. At the same time, we must recognize that the media’s emphasis on the gory details of that day - as catalogued in Bearing Witness - is not an objective reporting of the news, but rather an emotional appeal to our most visceral fears and revulsions, with the ultimate intention of perverting our understanding of what matters most: yes - the numbers.

There’s nothing we haven’t learned yet about October 7th that could or would justify the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Gaza’s civilian population.

For the sake of honesty and transparency, we should be allowed to see the contents of Bearing Witness. For the sake of history, we should maintain our sense of proportionality if and when we ever do get the chance to watch the film for ourselves, and not rely on mainstream media talking heads like Chris Cuomo to interpret it for us.