It is gut-wrenching to have to revisit the events of October 7 in southern Israel. But new evidence emerges that should shake our foundational thinking about Gazan civilians’ presumed innocence.

The Free Beacon has collected survivor reports. One of the survivors filmed the attacks:

Eyal Barad and his family hid in the safe room of their house from about 6:30 a.m. until the Israeli military evacuated them 12 or so hours later. But Barad, an engineer, had a rare view of the outside world thanks to a speed camera he had recently set up to bust his neighbors for driving on the sidewalk.

On the camera’s livestream, Barad watched three types of Gazans pass by his house: uniformed Hamas commandos carrying automatic weapons, RPGs, and grenades; casually dressed gunmen; and ordinary-looking men, women, and children. Barad said the ordinary Gazans vastly outnumbered the armed terrorists. He estimated that he saw at least a dozen children, who were between the ages of 10 and 15, and 30 women from Gaza. {snip]

“I can say with 100 percent certainty that [the women and kids] were not just innocent bystanders or looters. They were part of the massacre. They were part of the horrors that we endured that day.”

A mother describes hiding in her safe room with her children while a Gaza woman spent hours eating her food, serving meals to the Gazan men, and stealing the Israeli woman’s personal items, including her underwear.

Image: Gazans at al-Shifa hospital cheering footage of the October 7 massacre. YouTube screen grab.

Another survivor says he saw children between six and ten wearing Hamas military outfits, riding with a group of Hamas commandos. (my emphasis). Some of the boys were given rifles and told to kill the Israelis, which they did. The combatants’ young age would be surprising if one were not aware of how early military training begins in Gaza. In this video, we watch kindergartners execute a complex takeover of an Israeli outpost by killing a soldier. It is a graduation ceremony, and we see the whole family in proud attendance:

Tender-hearted people plead that these women and children are innocent. They are merely ‘brainwashed” and can be re-educated. Maybe. Perhaps some can.

But that argument makes the mistake of projecting one’s own values onto others, whose values may be substantially, and unchangeably, different. In this case, the decency and respect for human life that characterizes non-Muslims get projected onto a military/religious organization that values success at jihad more than anything else—more than one’s own life and certainly more than regard for an enemy’s life.

That sadistic contempt for Israeli life is displayed very ominously in a movie showing the October 7 atrocities that was watched by a vast audience of Gazan men in, of all places, the al Shifa hospital. The Gazans cheered wildly. So much for the notion that hospitals are only about saving lives:

The uproarious delight of the entertained jihadis should be chilling. Consequently, Israel and her supporters must think realistically about what to do with the Gazans—and their hideous ideology—once they win the war.

Madeline Brooks, M.A., is the former head of the New York chapter of ActforAmerica and is a conservative and counter-jihad writer. Her articles have been published in AmericanThinker.com, CanadaFreePress.com, FamilySecurityMatters.org, and elsewhere. Her book, What You Need To Know About Islamic Jihad: Information The Main Stream Media Is Not Giving You, is available on Scribd. She can be reached at ResistJihad@aol.com.