- Come on! - In God's name, let's go!
[Marandi] What happened on October the 7th
was a jail breakout,
or it was the slaves revolting against the master.
[Marandi] And of course, when slaves revolt against illegitimate masters,
that is not going to be peaceful
and it is going to be violent.
…terrorists here, and then we take to the right, and there are terrorists there.
[Mordechai] They were just surrounding the entire area of the party.
[Mordechai] They came ready for us, you know?
[Mordechai] They knew we were gonna scatter like fu**** sheep.
[Biton] We were driving, outside we saw a lot of terrorists.
[Biton] It was very horrible.
[Biton] There is a body over here, there’s a body over there.
[Biton] And I think I just took my seat really like that.
[Biton] So if there are any terrorist firing,
they won’t harm my head.
[VO] A terrible tragedy. A terrible revenge.
[Netanyahu] Citizens of Israel,
we are at war
[Hagari] We continue to mop up. We control the settlements
[Palestinian] Please, darling!
[Palestinian] For God's sake, say something!
[Palestinian Child] Dad, don't worry
[Palestinian Child] I'm OK, I'm fine. Daddy, don't worry!
[VO] Could this have been prevented?
[Cassif] We don’t want Palestinians to be hurt,
we don’t want Israelis to be hurt.
[Cassif] We want two peoples of the land
to live in peace and prosperity.
MIDDLE EAST: VICIOUS CIRCLE OF VIOLENCE
[VO] Is it possible to have peace in this region ever again?
[GEO] Israel
[Danielle Biton, Resident, Karmia Kibbutz] Around 6 a.m. we heard a lot of bombing
coming from the Iron Dome and from the Gaza Strip side.
[Biton] I think it was an hour of nonstop bombing going back and forth.
FOOTAGE BY HAMAS
IDF FOOTAGE
[Biton] I told my boyfriend that I think we need to leave.
[Biton] We didn’t know what we were supposed to do.
[Biton] Because from one hand, we had missiles going above our head,
and instruction was to stay in.
[Biton] But from the other hand, my home is really not secured.
FOOTAGE BY HAMAS
[Biton] Some of the people, that I know, their house was lit on fire.
[Biton] Again, from a person who’s living right next to the border,
I received SMS messages from our kibbutz.
[Biton] From last November telling us,
‘Don’t be afraid of the bombs that you’re hearing
because it’s HAMAS practicing.’
EYEWITNESS FOOTAGE
[Mordechai, Visitor, Nature Party Music Festival]
[Mordechai] They were just surrounding the entire area of the party.
[Mordechai] They came ready for us, you know?
[Mordechai] They knew we were gonna scatter like fu**** sheep.
[Mordechai] And every crossroad we go through, we see burnt cars,
we see dead bodies spread on the fu*** road.
[Mordechai] We see vehicles, empty vehicles all over with dead bodies,
with blood, with bullet holes.
[Mordechai] And we just drove. I pushed the gas all over.
[Mordechai] And we just drove until I got home.
[Biton] And it’s surreal. If they knew that they were practicing,
why didn’t the IDF and our government
practiced as well for this scenario.
COURTESY OF SPUTH FIRST RESPONDERS
[Biton] And it’s… it’s absurd.
[VO] A new war in the Middle East began on October 7, 2023:
2,500 Hamas militants crossed from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
[VO] It’s said to be Israel's security forces’ greatest failure:
[VO] Gaza is blockaded, thought to be under full control.
[Simon Tsipis, Israeli Political Researcher] It's not just the fence
that we watched being knocked down by bulldozers
[Tsipis] There are microphones. It's an electrified fence, it's an alarm system
[Tsipis] There's CCTV
[Tsipis] One of Israel's satellites is permanently over the Gaza Strip
[Tsipis] It can literally see a car's license plate
[Tsipis] A whole division is stationed along the perimeter,
the whole fence, the border, which is equipped with all kinds of weapons
ISRAEL NOVEMBER 2023
[Cassif] Not too long before the massacre of 7 of October Netaniyahu did 2 things,
first they took the weapon from many of groups in the kibbutzim, you know,
groups that is in charge of their security... and passed it to the West Bank,
to the settlers....
another thing that Netanyahu did...
on the border between the South Israel and Gaza Strip
there were originally 35 battalions,
Netanyahu moved 32 of them to the West Bank and left only 3...
that allowed the Hamas to succeed in their monstrous plan.
[Cassif] Even more than they thought.
[Cassif] That there were even a couple of soldiers
who said to the officers that they see
[Ofer Cassif, Israeli Politician, Knesset Member]
or inspected suspicious movements in Gaza Strip.
[Cassif] The officers said… told them
that they shouldn’t stop nothing,
and that if they continue saying that there’s something suspicious in Gaza Strip,
they were going to prison.
[Peter Kuznick, History Professor, American University, Washington, DC]
[Kuznick] I was shocked when Hamas attacked Israel.
[Kuznick] I thought it was horrendous what the… what Hamas did.
FOOTAGE BY HAMAS, GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER
[Kuznick] Unconscionable. Unforgivable.
[Kuznick] There were maybe 350 soldiers and policemen killed,
but another… more than 800 civilians who were killed that day.
[Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Professor, University of Tehran]
[Marandi] What happened on October the 7
was a jail breakout,
or it was the slaves revolting against the master.
[Marandi] And, of course, when slaves revolt against illegitimate masters,
that is not going to be peaceful and it is going to be violent.
[Marandi] And the Israelis, they should have thought about that
before they expelled Palestinians,
subjugated Palestinians and murdered Palestinians.
[Marandi] I think it was inevitable.
[Marandi] The Palestinian people have been
under brutal subjugation for many decades.
[VO] Israel responded to the attack with Operation Swords of Iron.
[Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister]
[Netanyahu] Citizens of Israel,
we are at war
[Daniel Hagari, Head, IDF Spokesperson's Unit]
[Hagari] We continue to mop up. We control the settlements
[Netanyahu] We won't stop,
until we achieve victory
[GEO] Gaza Strip
[Kuznick] The Israelis had no game plan for what's going to happen.
[Kuznick] They went in there to get revenge.
[Kuznick] But they have to do it in a targeted pinpoint way, not by leveling Gaza.
[Abir Barakat, Gaza Strip Resident]
[Abir] We went out to see what had happened
[Abir] We saw people leaving their homes
[Abir] Many buildings were razed to the ground,
but we chose to stay inside and meet our fate,
considering we've already been harmed in previous airstrikes
[Palestinian Man] Please, darling!
[Palestinian Man] For God's sake, say something!
[Palestinian Man] Say something!
[Palestinian Child] Dad, don't worry,
[Palestinian Child] I'm OK, I'm fine. Dad, don't worry!
[Iyad Abu Zahar, Head, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital]
[Abu Zahar] A shelter of one of the Bureij camp's schools was recently attacked
[Abu Zahar] An ambulance just arrived, containing over 10 bodies, including kids
[Abu Zahar] They were all killed in shelling
[Abu Zahar] As you can see, some are arriving in body bags
[Abu Zahar] Some are children
[Abu Zahar] They've brought body parts
[Abu Zahar] Body parts were scattered, including kids'
[Abu Zahar] Most of the dead children arrived without heads
[Abu Zahar] They were killed by weapons forbidden on an international level
[Palestinian Woman] Oh my darling, my darling!
[VO] A humanitarian disaster unfolded in the Gaza.
[VO] Finding food is getting harder.
[VO] Israel says Hamas militants hide in hospitals and schools -
so they are bombed too.
[VO] Thousands are reported dead.
[Cassif] Nothing justifies the massacre that Hamas carried out,
[Cassif] Most of my objection and my companions' objection to the assault on Gaza
is a moral one,
because the vast majority of the victims,
more than 70%, are innocent civilians.
[Cassif] In Israel, there is a racist campaign
that says there are no innocent in Gaza.
[Kuznick] The media coverage started off
being totally sympathetic to Israel,
but the images that are coming out
are so heart-breaking,
so sad, so tragic
that that the balance of world opinion
has shifted and the sympathies toward the Israelis
are now overwhelmed by the sympathies for the people of Gaza.
[GEO] United States, October 2023
[GEO] United Kingdom November 2023
[GEO] Italy October 2023
[Protester] We talk about Hamas' acts of terror
[Protester] But I wonder, what about Israel?
[Protester] They've occupied Palestine, killed its people
[Protester] Why is that never called terrorism?
[Protester] It's a case of just switching terms whenever it suits you
[VO] The global community is once again talking about the Palestinian tragedy.
[VO] One of Hamas goals of may have been to draw attention
to the disaster in the Gaza Strip.
[VO] And this isn’t the first time that’s been done with terrorist attacks.
[GEO] Germany November 2023
[VO] Conflicts here broke out 75 years ago,
and there has been no peace since.
[VO] Jews started coming to Palestine in the late 19th century.
[VO] When anti-Semitic sentiment was rife in Europe and the Zionist movement appeared.
[VO] Its goal was to create an independent Jewish state.
[VO] The British proposed to establish it in Palestine—
at the time territory under Britain's protectorate.
[VO] This is when the first aliyah occurred—
the return of the Jews to their Homeland.
[Kuznick] At the time,
there were more than ten times as many
Arabs and Muslims in Palestine as there were Jews.
[Kuznick] During World War Two and the Holocaust that changed the situation,
changed the dynamics.
[Kuznick] Six million Jews had been killed.
[Kuznick] And the world's sympathies were with the Jews.
[Andrey Kortunov, Political Analyst, Historian, General Director, Russian International Affairs Council] The United Nations adopted a resolution in autumn of 1947,
according to which two states should be created
[Kortunov] This decision elicits a very incendiary reaction
[Kortunov] By and large, Jewish settlers agree with the resolution
[Kortunov] Arabs deem it unfair, as more land is allocated to Israel
than to them - the Arab state of Palestine
[Kortunov] And the land Israel gets is better
[Kortunov] Plus, the fact that this Israeli state
was established on Palestinian lands is also unacceptable
[Kuznick] The war begins. The Arabs declare war
and thousands of Israelis were of Jews were killed
and maybe 13,000 Arabs were killed.
[Kuznick] However, what happens is about 750,000 Arabs
were driven out of their homeland.
[Kuznick] Jews bombed something like 29 Arab villages.
[Tsipis] Most of the Palestinians fled
[Tsipis] And they fled in three directions:
Egypt...
[Tsipis] The Egyptian military stopped them, and the refugees set up camp
[Tsipis] Today, this is the Gaza Strip
[Tsipis] Towards Jordan... today, that refugee zone is the West Bank
on the banks of the Jordan River
[Tsipis] And towards Syria and Lebanon...
today it's called Hezbollah, which in fact controls all of Lebanon
[VO] About 800 thousand Palestinians lost their land and their homes.
Such things are hard to forgive.
[VO] A movement to liberate Palestine ,founded by Yasser Arafat, began to grwo.
[VO] He called for establishment of Palestinian state
and started a bitter fight against those he considered invaders,
which forced Israel to negotiate.
[Tsipis] Terrorist attacks, suicide bombers disembarking from boats in Tel Aviv,
shooting Israelis, bombing buses and restaurants
[Tsipis] They took hostages in schools. They committed terrorist attacks
[Kortunov] Israel needed a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
[Kortunov] Israel's leadership thought Yasser Arafat was very stubborn
and uncooperative, and they found Hamas was such a counterweight
[Kortunov] Initially, Hamas dealt with humanitarian issues
COURTESY OF WILLIAM J. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
[VO] But Arafat signed a peace treaty with Israel.
[VO] And in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian autonomies appeared.
[VO] Fatah movement took power, and Arafat became president.
[VO] But peace never came.
[VO] Israel's President Yitzhak Rabin
was assassinated by an Israeli student
because he'd signed the peace treaty with Palestinians.
[VO] And in the Gaza Strip Hamas rose up
and terrorist attacks resumed.
[Tsipis] The Hamas group was created with the silent consent
and, in some cases, even the support, of the State of Israel
[Tsipis] Files of Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad,
were recently declassified, saying
it is in Prime Minister Netanyahu's interest that Hamas exists,
and Hamas has been seized by right-wing groups in Israel
that aren't interested in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
as they realise there's only one way to resolve this conflict:
one country for two peoples
[Tsipis] But, in that case, Israel would cease to be called a Jewish country
and lose its ethnic Jewish identity
[VO] Hamas came to power in Gaza in 2006,
after which Israel and Egypt blockaded the entire territory.
[VO] More than 2 million people live here, on a small piece of land.
[VO] Almost all are refugees or children of refugees.
[VO] A fence has been erected around Gaza,
which is kept under constant surveillance.
[Kuznick] Look at what's going on there. 53% poverty rate
among young Gazans between 19 and 29,
something like 70% unemployment.
[Kuznick] Gaza has survived as a welfare state.
[Kuznick] The people there have no hope. They have been desperate…
[Kortunov] One of the fundamental problems is
that Hamas actually represents Palestine...
at least that part of Palestine that belongs to the Gaza Strip
[Kortunov] In Israel, they say: 'We're ready to deal with Palestine,
but won't deal with Hamas, we want to destroy them'
[Kortunov] But how to separate Palestine from Hamas is totally unclear
[VO] While Israel fights Hamas in the Gaza Strip,
on Palestine's West Bank, governed by Fatah, there is no open conflict.
not yet...
[VO] But after the outbreak of hostilities,
the situation is now at boiling point
[VO] Israel is conducting anti-terrorist raids,
and there's talk of hundreds of dead, including children.
[Mr. Nidal Amireh, Hamdan Omar Mahmoud's Uncle]
[Nidal] We were returning, and a bullet came from behind
[Nidal] Hammud was here, in the middle
[Nidal] The bullet went through the seat's headrest, hit his head, and exploded
CCTV CAMERA FOOTAGE
[Nidal] A witness said he was still alive
[Nidal] I put him back in the car and took him to a hospital
[Nidal] When we arrived, the doctor said he was in critical condition
[GEO] Palestine, West Bank
[VO] After such events, thousands of Palestinians
gathered for funerals in the West Bank.
[VO] The killing of civilians causes a wave of violent confrontations
between Palestinian protesters and the Israel's military.
[Kortunov] It's a closed, vicious cycle:
Israel conducts raids,
these raids lead to the radicalisation of the populace,
which becomes increasingly inclined to support
fundamentalists and radicals,
and this radicalisation necessitates more raids in due time, and so on
[Kortunov] So, we see a vicious circle of violence
[VO] Things are so tense in Israel,
even orthodox Jews are taking up arms.
[VO] Until recently, this was unimaginable—
these people are exempt from military service.
[VO] Their duty-bound is study the Torah
and preserve Jewish traditions.
[VO] Now they are learning to defend themselves.
[Roni Ayalon, Leader, 'People's Guard' Project] Up till now we trusted the security forces,
but now we see that we have to prepare ourselves.
SELF DEFENCE COURSES
[Ayalon] When somebody is dressed like this, you know that he is a Jew.
[Ayalon] The haredi community has no army background,
they don’t know anything about security,
and the Arabs know that.
[Ayalon] They live very close to the Arab villages,
and in 2-3 minutes…
10, 20, 50, or a 100 Arabs can come with guns or with knives…
[VO] Meanwhile, Gazans are trying to cope with the humanitarian disaster.
[VO] There's practically no food there, and a critical shortage of medicines.
[VO] Turkey, India, and many other countries have sent humanitarian aid to Gaza.
[VO] Russia is also sending dozens of tonnes of aid by Egypt.
[Abu Zahar] The situation is hard
[Abu Zahar] At the start of the war,
we got humanitarian and medical aid from Russia
[Abu Zahar] The only tools we work with in our operating rooms we got from Russia
[Abu Zahar] Thank you, Russia
[VO] The UN constantly calls on Israel to stop,
but the operation continues with America's full support.
[Kuznick] The problem is:
we've got the victims, Israelis,
the Palestinians, very unique position
because they're being victimized by people who were themselves victims,
who had suffered in the Holocaust, which complicates it.
[Kuznick] Complicates the moral situation,
complicates the politics.
[Marandi] No, there's no complication.
[Marandi] The Israelis are the aggressors.
[Marandi] It is utterly racist for Europeans to think
that because of their crimes,
they can force the Palestinian people, to pay the price.
[Marandi] They have to give up their land because someone else has committed a crime?
[Marandi] That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
[GEO] Gaza Strip
[Kuznick] Victory is not possible.
[Kuznick] In fact, from a human standpoint, we’ve already lost.
[Kuznick] The world is never going to forget these images.
[Kuznick] The world is never going to forget what Hamas did on October 7th,
and the world is never going to be able to forget what the Israelis have done…
[GEO] Gaza Strip
[Biton] We have to stay strong.
[Biton] The Israeli people have to stay strong.
[Biton] And afterwards there will be some very tough questions
that Benjamin Netanyahu and all of the people who are sitting in those
120 chairs will have to answer.
[Biton] But for now, we don't think about that.
[Biton] We just think about what is the fastest way to end Hamas.
[Biton] And I do believe that we could do that and we will do that.
[Kortunov] For Israel, anything short of total victory will be seen as defeat
[Kortunov] But, for Hamas, the opposite: anything short of total defeat
will be seen as triumph
[Kortunov] So, to claim victory,
[Kortunov] Israel must destroy Hamas, but Hamas only needs to survive
[Kortunov] And even if Hamas is defeated, there are other radical groups there
that will be ready to replace Hamas if its infrastructure is destroyed
[Kuznick] Civilians, women and children,
they met their families, members of their family have such anger, rage, bitterness.
[Kuznick] It’s another generation
of resistance fighters, potential terrorists.
GAZA STRIP, ARREST OF ALLEGED HAMAS MEMBERS BY ISRAELI MILITARY
[Marandi] Ethnic cleansing and mass murder
is being carried out against these people,
and the regimes that are behind this genocide
are Western regimes.
[Marandi] All the bombs, all the weapons
that are used by the Israeli regime
are being supplied by the United States.
[Cassif] We don't want Palestinians to be hurt.
We don't want Israelis to be hurt.
We don't want anyone to be hurt.
[Cassif] We want the two peoples of the land
to live in peace and prosperity.
[Cassif] And there's no other way but the political one,
the political solution that is ending the occupation and the siege,
a full independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
[Kuznick] Jews and Muslims could live peacefully.
[Kuznick] But we need to see new leadership in Gaza,
new leadership in the West Bank,
and new leadership in Israel.
[Kuznick] And, I hope, new leadership in the United States.
[Kuznick] I mean, those are the principal players here.