Ministers call for Oct. 7 footage to be made public in hope it quells US campus protests – report

Several government ministers are pushing for Israel to publish graphic footage of the October 7 Hamas massacre, believing that doing so will shift the public narrative in Israel’s favor and quell the protests on US college campuses, Channel 12 reports.

According to the report, the push for the footage to be published, after it was decided early on in the war that it would not be made available to the public, comes in response to the explosion of anti-Israel protests on campuses across the US.

Among those in favor of publishing the footage is Diaspora Affairs Minister Amihai Chikli, who reportedly said in a cabinet meeting earlier today that Israel needs to publish the footage “to explain to the world what we are fighting for.”

Economy Minister Nir Barkat is also reported to favor publishing the footage, telling the cabinet meeting that “while showing dead children from Gaza all day long, we hide the images of the horrors of October 7.”

“Why don’t we use the weapons that we have? There are thousands of horrifying videos that the cabinet decided to hide,” he is said to have added. “Instead of showing the world that Hamas are monsters, we’re hiding the evidence that gives us justification.”

Following the October 7 terror assault, in which thousands of invading terrorists slaughtered some 1,200 people and seized 253 hostages, mostly civilians, Israel organized showings of a compilation of raw footage for international media outlets.

The harrowing 44-minute montage was also aired for Israeli and US officials, as well as at the United Nations.