Chris Cuomo: Raw Oct. 7 video shows that Hamas 'enjoyed mutilating,' held 'heads and bloody corpses' of Jews as 'trophies'

NewsNation's Chris Cuomo said he attended a private screening Thursday with other journalists of raw Oct. 7 video.

While Cuomo said he had seen some of the imagery from the 47-minute video on previous occasions, "a lot more" was "new" to him.

In a chilling monologue posted to X, Cuomo shared that the screening brought the trauma of 9/11 to his mind and what it meant for America. "They hit us where it hurt," he said and added that it was about "terrorists robbing us of what and who we are about at home: It is us, or it is them."

Then Cuomo described what he took away from the screening of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Jews:

If an enemy wanted to make sure that Israel would come for them, the message would be, "We're going to take children, women, innocents, and more, tie them up, and burn them alive. Just like the Holocaust." The ultimate fear of what the world can bring the Jews' way. When a decision is made that Jews are less than human and treated that way, in words and deeds, I now know that is exactly the message Hamas sent — on purpose, at scale. And I was not aware of that before. I had seen that before, but I did not understand how intentional the effort was. They did it methodically. You hear it in the voices, the commands, the ease, the excitement of finding and mutilating victims. Being told "let them play with IT."

Merely murdering innocents was the least of it. ... This was not death from above; it was death in your face, hands-on and personal. They enjoyed mutilating and went back and celebrated in the streets with heads and bloody corpses as trophies. This was absolute genocide. It's a word that people are misapplying, and this is where it does apply. Even more important — to the terrorists apparently — was what they left behind. Charred reminders of a holocaust. The obvious desire to see as many Jews utterly destroyed as possible. Families melted together on purpose. And yes, there are women dead, bloody groins, twisted disfigured legs. The [Israeli Defense Forces] says this is not a morbid coincidence; it's a part of a pattern of rape and torture.

Forty-seven minutes is just a fraction of the dead, but it is overwhelming that Hamas wanted war. This was not the irrepressible angst of the desperate who want freedom, who want better, nor certainly want anything approximating peace. They wanted to Jews to know that they want them to burn — again.

He continued:

I now understand ... better what is fueling Israel. This is not tit for tat. This is not, "You did to us, and now might will make right." They are fueled by the deepest fears of genocide, because those fears are real. I am not trying to erase or in any way mitigate the massive death toll of civilians in Gaza or diminish the obvious need for the violence to stop. If anything, after seeing this video today, there's an increased urgency to avoid what could still come because ... this could get much worse. When people have been given reason to believe it is you or them, they are capable of anything. And while people are moved to absolute outrage by what they see, I'm telling you, Israel is doing far less than it could. It is easy to say "stop" — I'm saying it, everybody's saying it — it is very hard to say "how." Why? Because seeing what the terror group in charge of Palestine did to the Jews and has promised to do again, how do you ask Israel to risk being vulnerable to those who do not honor agreements and have made it very clear they don't want peace? They want to burn and kill the Jews. That's why it's so hurtful and people are so hair-triggered when people say things in protests here in America that maybe they don't mean that way; maybe they don't see that context. But the people on the other side of the propaganda do. The suggestion, "Well, here's what you do. You stop bombing; use commandos." How does that not suggest to Israel, "You have to do this in a way that Hamas can kill more of you; you have to reduce your advantage"? ... "But you also have to stop bombing because aid has to get in." "Will Hamas allow it in?" "Oh yes, they have." That's not the sum total of the reports that we get. They have NOT let aid organizations get in to see the hostages and to help them. And they have a history of diverting and taking aid that was meant for others and other things. It's not about numbers; it is about Israel being shown its worst fears can be realized — because they were. So knowing that and ... understanding our own history with what we did in response to a threat that was nowhere as real and present as what Israel's facing, what do we do to make it stop?

Anything else?

Days after Hamas' surprise Oct. 7 attack, the terror group's main spokesperson was caught on video walking out of an interview with Cuomo — after which Cuomo said the spokesperson simply couldn't deal with "reality of the pain" his own "terror organization" has "caused."

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