A terrified girl asks her father for help on the phone, sobs, begs him to send the police immediately, there are many dead people. Then suddenly the communication stops. Until a few minutes before, thousands of young people were dancing and singing happily: very loud music, endless selfies, the contagious joy of being together in the great esplanade, the desire to be there, to laugh, to live. It is dawn, after a night of celebration, when the dry booms of missiles announce that it is time to die, from a grenade, under the wild blows of Kalashnikovs or tortured in a van fleeing towards hell. Now the enormous open-air disco is silent, there is the crackle of machine guns, with the screams of possessed murderers, suddenly appearing armed on cars, motorbikes and hang gliders; there is the gasp and desperation of those trying to escape into the fields or onto the asphalt already cluttered with corpses.
You can see the blood, you can imagine much more.
Six months after the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October and the massacre of hundreds of defenseless women and men, killed and kidnapped because they were Jews, a documentary by director Dan Pe’er arrives from Israel. It was created with images and videos recovered from the cell phones of those trying to save themselves and from the cameras of some terrorists and with audio recordings of those hours of fear and death. The documentary film, #Nova, presented in recent days by the Jerusalem Foundation and the Roman Jewish Community, is an uncomfortable testimony, full of pain. The images and dialogues explain in a concise manner, without dwelling on terrible details, the dynamics of the assault and describe an unprecedented ferocity.
The facts speak.
Instead, the profound motivation of men capable of exterminating hundreds of innocent people in cold blood, without hesitation or second thoughts, remains almost shrouded in a veil; while the disbelief of those attacked in the face of a monstrous and unimaginable grip is touching. Maybe later there will be time and desire to elaborate on this too. Of course, it is only the trigger of the tragedy that has shaken Israel and Gaza for six months. This was followed by the Tsahal’s harsh response to annihilate the Hamas threat, free the hostages and restore an essential level of security. Disproportionate reaction from the Israeli government, appalling toll of destruction and Palestinian civilian victims used by Hamas as human shields, dramatic fate of more than half of the hostages still detained, if not dead, no plan on who and how will be able to administer Gaza when they lay down their weapons: Of course, we can and must speak about all this in complete freedom.
However, it is impressive to hear that #Nova it was rejected by schools, universities and associations to which the promoters turned to share it with a wider audience. Better to avoid it, taking into account the ongoing protests against Israel – several local Don Abbondios responded when interviewed, fearful of possible consequences. To justify the refusal to show the documentary on the October 7 attack, some even went so far as to invoke a grotesque level of communication between Israel and Hamas. A microphone turned on to Israel’s reasons would therefore require us to do the same for those of Hamas: we ignore the difference between a democratic state, despite its limitations, and a terrorist movement which together with its instigators pursues the shameful intent of destroying Israel and its cancellation from the geographical map (“Palestine from the river to the sea”).
On the other hand, the refusal of factual testimony is also the result of the international isolation into which Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with its extremism has driven Israel. The stalemate of recent weeks, the clashes with the United States, the strong pressure for the Israeli government to postpone the military offensive against Rafah, the resumption of street protests generate disorientation in a people wounded and tried as never before in recent decades. The emergency is reflected in the encirclement of Israel by Tehran’s armed emissaries, as well as in the “cognitive dominance” of Hamas on the international level. Among other things, the senseless idea of boycotting Israeli universities was born there.
The reality is that few now want to remember the October 7 massacre, overshadowed by the bloody Israeli reaction in Gaza, by the thousands of victims and Palestinians trapped in the Strip. Israel should have the strength to reflect on all this, to understand that if at this point no one is even willing to screen a documentary, the road for Benjamin Netanyahu and his intractable allies becomes even more tortuous and risky.
