After a screening at the Museum of Tolerance aimed to show the brutality of the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians, fights broke out among protesters outside. Supporters of Israel hold flags across the street from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles on Wednesday.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times

Nov. 9, 2023

Having produced movies like "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs," Lawrence Bender has a high tolerance for make-believe violence on film. But he wasn't sure he could sit through raw footage of the real thing: the killings of Israeli civilians by Hamas.

Still, Bender felt strongly that the massacre in Israel last month, in which more than 1,400 people were killed, has not been met with an appropriate level of public outrage and sympathy for the Jewish people. "On Oct. 7, where were all of our friends?" he asked. "They were missing. I thought that they would have showed up, the way we feel like we always as Jews show up for everybody else."

It was in part this sense of abandonment and isolation that drew him and others to the auditorium of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening for a screening of the footage, which had been compiled by the Israeli military, at an event called "Bearing Witness." With Israel facing mounting criticism for killing thousands of Palestinians in Gaza as it goes after Hamas, the screening was organized to show the brutality with which Hamas targeted Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, with wrenching footage of people being gunned down and images of bloody teenagers and lifeless children.

"We not only need to defend ourselves: We also need to defend the truth," said one of the organizers, Sara Greenberg — a former foreign affairs adviser to the Israeli prime minister whose husband, Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler, is a spokesman for the Israeli military. "Just as there are those who deny the Holocaust, there are those who are attempting to deny and distort the atrocities committed by Hamas, despite the fact that the Hamas terrorists documented the attacks themselves."

The evening at the Museum of Tolerance highlighted the intense divisiveness and emotions of the moment. While people at the screening inside the museum said that the attacks of Oct. 7 were being downplayed, or even denied, by Israel's critics, pro-Palestinian protesters outside the museum tried to call attention to the rising death toll from Israel's counterattack in Gaza, which has killed more than 10,000 people, including over 4,000 children, according to Gaza's health ministry, which is run by Hamas.

One man outside held a sign that said "Honk for Cease Fire!" Some wrote in chalk the names of Palestinians who had been killed onto the sidewalk. "Stop funding genocide," a protester called into a bullhorn as the film let out. "Fourteen hundred people were murdered — that's awful, I'm not disputing that," said one of the protesters who would not give her name because she said she was wary of the government. "But that doesn't mean you get to level a city and murder 10,000 people."

Groups of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters faced off on the streets and, after the screening, a violent brawl broke out that the police dispersed. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that "We cannot allow current worldwide tension to devolve into this unacceptable violence in our city."

There was a heavily armed security and police presence at the museum, which is the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. Invited guests were required to sign nondisclosure agreements in advance pledging not to record or to videotape the film; to go through several security checkpoints; and to surrender their phones.

The screening comes at a time when many Jews feel anguished that the attacks of Oct. 7 have been justified, or even celebrated, by some members of other marginalized groups, and has fueled a debate about when criticism of Israel crosses over into antisemitism. Image Protesters outside of the Museum of Tolerance write out the names of Palestinians who have been killed.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times Image Heavy security presence was at the museum as guests exited the screening.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times

"It is all these people who are dancing in the streets on Jewish graves who should be watching this film, because if it was any other race this would not be happening," said the actor Julianna Margulies, who helped create the Holocaust Educator School Partnership with New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. "Do they not remember that Jews fought alongside them and died for their cause?"

The 43-minute film was culled from body cameras worn by Hamas attackers, dashcams, traffic cameras, closed-circuit TV and the mobile phones and social media accounts of victims, soldiers and emergency medical workers. It includes disturbing scenes of people being gunned down as they drive along a highway, cower in their homes and try to flee across an open field. There are still photographs of burned bodies, of bloody teenagers piled in the backs of trucks, of lifeless children in pajamas (their faces blurred to protect their identities).

Shefler said the film could not cover all of the horror — given the hundreds of hours of footage — and represented less than 10 percent of those murdered.

Before the screening, Gilad Erdan, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, warned that the film "will change the way you view the Middle East," containing "barbarity and cruelty the likes of which you have never seen before."

While watching, members of the audience gasped, winced and wept. At least two left the theater before the film was over, and one man shouted after it ended "Show the babies! Show the rapes!" before being escorted out by security.

Among those who were wiping away tears was Christina Pascucci, a former newscaster and war correspondent who last month joined the race to succeed Dianne Feinstein in the United States Senate. She said she hoped the film "galvanizes understanding of the horrors of that day and valuing the lives that were lost."

Pascucci, 38, said it was only when she was in her 20s that she discovered that her grandmother was Jewish; last month she joined a humanitarian mission to Israel.

"It doesn't need to be a polarizing issue," she said. "You can simultaneously denounce the killing of innocent Palestinians" and condemn the killing of Jews.

Several news reports said that Gal Gadot, the Israeli actress who starred in "Wonder Woman," had been among those encouraging people to attend. Ms. Gadot did not respond to messages seeking comment and was not at the screening, though her husband, Jaron Varsano, attended.

The event was one of two organized by Greenberg and Melissa Zukerman, a publicist, with the support of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. The other took place in New York the night before. Among those in the auditorium in Los Angeles, Zukerman confirmed, were Ynon Kreiz, chairman and chief executive of Mattel; David Ellison, the founder and chief executive of Skydance Media; and Roger Lynch, the chief executive officer of Condé Nast.

Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, said in a telephone interview from Israel that he had "never been in favor of atrocity footage," but "this footage needs to be shown."

The film was followed by a video of Broadway stars singing "Bring Him Home," from "Les Misérables," in support of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Many of those in attendance spoke of the Holocaust and World War II. "We are the leftovers of pogroms," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, who established the Wiesenthal Center, noting that it was the eve of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass in 1938 when the Nazis smashed Jewish storefronts, killed Jews and sent thousands to concentration camps.

Several said that they were saddened that it seemed necessary to show, and watch, such upsetting footage.

"It should be enough that there are eyewitness accounts and there are funerals and there are shivas and there are bereaved families," said Rabbi Sharon Brous, the founder and senior rabbi of Ikar, a Los Angeles congregation. "But it's apparently not enough. So there has to be a historical record that's established, and these videos are part of establishing that record."