A screening was held Wednesday night at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles of video footage of the massacre of Israelis by Hamas on October 7. The film titled “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” prepared by the IDF spokesman, was screened for foreign and Israeli reporters as well as members of the Knesset last week and drew harsh reactions; in LA, none of those watching the screening got up and left.
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Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, spoke in place of director Guy Nattiv, who had been scheduled to come to the screening and open the event. This film "will change the way you view the Middle East and the war in Gaza," Erdan said. "People ask me all the time: Why did they film themselves doing what they did? And I answer - because they wanted to terrorize the Israelis so that they will never feel safe in Israel."
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ההזמנה להקרנתInvitation to the screening in Hollywood of footage from the terror attack on October 7
Rabbi Marvin Hier, president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, also spoke ahead of the screening. "Many people do not understand how many Jews we have lost over the past 2,000 years; if they had not killed the Jews, today we would have 200 million Jews in the world, but we only have 14 million. We are remnants; The exodus of the pogroms and Hitler. Someone once told Simon Wiesenthal that he was not a real Holocaust survivor and he replied, 'We are all survivors.' If Hitler had not lost World War II, there would have been no Jews left in the world at all."
"We owe it to the 1,400 victims, to the more than 240 abductees and their families. We must serve as witnesses and show those who seek to destroy us that we are still here and still alive and will continue to live and prosper," he also said.
At the time of the screening, outside the hall, a violent fight broke out between a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and a group of pro-Israel demonstrators who were standing on the other side of the road.
Some demonstrators waved U.S. and Israeli flags, and a woman used a bullhorn to chant, “Bring them home,” a reference to the Israeli hostages. Others held signs that read, “Anti-Zionism ≠ Anti-Semitism” and “The Museum of Tolerance is showing a pro-genocide film,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Photographs from the event show people with Israeli flags being attacked. The police were called to the scene.
The screening was intended for Hollywood entertainment industry officials, and some actors also were present. Familiar faces included actress Swell Ariel Or ("Beauty Queen of Jerusalem") and actor Mark Feuerstein ("Resistance"). Gal Gadot's husband, Yaron Varsano, also arrived attended the screening. "I am devastated by what I saw," Feuerstein told Ynet, "there was a particularly difficult scene of a father and his two sons who hid in a corner until Hamas threw a grenade into a room at them and the father was killed. You see the cruelty in the faces of the terrorists and cannot understand how someone is able to do such inhuman things."
"I believe that if the world sees this, it will change the way people see Israel and this war. No one will be able to deny anymore that such things happened," he said. He also referred to Hollywood stars who refrain from expressing support for Israel. "I saw many people who suffered from racism themselves and did not tweet or put up a single post supporting Israel, this is very unfortunate," he said.
The LA Times reported that some in the audience "wept, gasped and cried out at the most horrific sequences, including extensive footage from a music festival where some 300 people were killed."