‘Bearing Witness’ to brutality: An Israeli consul general screens horrific chronicle of Hamas atrocities

A box of tissues is passed around in advance.

Its contents will be put to plenty of use soon enough.

But first, the room goes dark — and the mood quickly follows suit.

It’s 7 p.m. Tuesday, and an audience of around 30-40 attendees of the Restoring National Confidence Summit have gathered in a ballroom on the second floor of Planet Hollywood Resort to see something none of them would ever want to see — would ever even want to imagine was possible — such is the scope of human misery about to be projected on the two screens before them.

“Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre” is about to begin.

The brutal-to-the-bone, unflinching film chronicles some of the horrific acts of violence committed by Hamas terrorists on that day in Israel.

Produced by the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit, “Bearing Witness” is comprised of agonizingly graphic footage taken from body cameras worn by the terrorists, from the cell phones of victims and first responders alike. Footage from security cameras showed scenes from locations including the Nova music festival, where 364 civilians were massacred, the concert grounds reduced to a smoldering, devastated landscape of burned cars and bodies.

The screening is introduced by Israel Bachar, consul general of Israel to the Pacific Southwest, who’s come to Vegas to show the film.

“I watched this movie twice,” Bachar notes a few hours earlier during an interview at a Starbucks off the casino floor. “When you’re coming up from this movie, the most shocking thing that you take home — many people tell me — is the glee of the Hamas terrorists, after murdering people. It’s unbelievable. Your stomach is upside down. Many people cannot watch the whole movie. They’re just leaving the movie.”

Before entering the screening, everyone must relinquish their cellphones first — this is not footage meant to be disseminated widely.

Attendees are free to leave during the film if it becomes too much to bear, but they can’t return after exiting.

On this night, everyone stays, largely frozen in place.

There’s a profound stillness in the room, save for the wiping away of tears.

‘It’s mind-boggling. It’s unbelievable’

It’s 47 minutes that feel like a thousand.

That’s the run time of “Bearing Witness,” though it’ll likely run far longer in the minds of those who see it.

The footage is far too gruesome and inhumane to describe in detail, the carnage best conveyed in barbaric broad strokes: We see homes invaded and burned; people and pets shot to death at point-blank range; the bodies of charred infants; a kindergarten invaded by gunmen; a pair of shrieking young brothers whose father has just been killed by a hand grenade.

“Why am I alive?” one of them screams in horror.

As overwhelmingly savage as it all is, it could have been far worse: footage of sexual abuse, torture and the killing of children has been omitted from the film out of respect for the victims and their loved ones.

For Bachar, the images remain hard to process — as is the terrorist assault itself.

“It’s mind-boggling. It’s unbelievable,” he says. “For us, the Israelis, it’s shocking, because militarily, we didn’t think that this kind of massive attack can happen against Israeli civilians. There was no military goal. It was not an army versus another army. It was about the glee to kill and torture Israeli Jews — 39 of them American Jews.”

Bachar assumed his consul general position last September, just weeks before the carnage of October 7th.

He’s spent the past four months engaged in an unexpected war effort.

“We’re doing the diplomatic work that needs to be done here in America,” says Bachar, a native of Israel who got his master’s degree at New York’s Fordham University and whose wife is American. “America is very crucial and important to Israel. There’s a big Israeli community that lives in L.A., that lives in Nevada — and American Jews, of course. It’s beautiful to see how much the American people tremendously care about Israel and helping Israel.”

Still, he points out that there has been a rise in anti-semitism in America since the Hamas attacks, some of which he attributes to the spread of online misinformation.

This is part of the reason why he’s here to show “Bearing Witness,” to present a visual documentation of the actions that precipitated Israel’s current war with Hamas, whose brutality is captured candidly, horridly.

“The Israel conflict with Palestine, it’s more than 100 years old, it’s very complicated with a lot of history and other complexities,” Bachar notes. “If somebody’s not really studying the issue and going to the serious sources — not TikTok — than he is not going to understand the strife. And I don’t blame him for it.

“It’s complicated,” he reiterates. “So we are trying to fight the social media fight. It’s not easy.”

Still, he sees a silver lining to said fight.

“Jewish Americans now understand that the anti-semitism is real — it’s not a fairy tale,” Bachar says. “And they decided to stand up and fight. This phenomena is very crucial, because they are Americans, their kids are American, and they grew up here.

“It’s their country,” he continues, “so they need to fight for it.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram