Cuomo on Oct. 7 footage: ‘They wanted the Jews to know that they want them to burn again’

NewsNation host Chris Cuomo described the difficult experience of watching footage Thursday of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, likening the attack to Sept. 11 and the Holocaust.

Cuomo said he had a “heavy day,” viewing 47 minutes of prepared footage at the Israeli consulate in New York City depicting the Hamas surprise attack on Israel that launched the Israel-Hamas war.

It is estimated that about 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attacks and about 200 more were kidnapped by Hamas.

“I realized something that I had missed before,” Cuomo said. “[The video] took me immediately and deeply into a past trauma. The exact feeling that I had when I learned why 9/11 happened.”

He described the Sept. 11 attacks as “unholy efforts” intended to trigger “the wrath of a people united in a common fear.”

“So if an enemy wanted to make sure that Israel would come for them, the message would be, ‘We’re going to take children, women, innocence and more, tie them up and burn them alive,’” Cuomo said of the Oct. 7 attack. “Just like the Holocaust.”

“I now know that is exactly the message Hamas sent on purpose, at scale. And I was not aware of that before,” he continued. “I had seen that bodies had been burned. But I did not understand or appreciate how intentional the effort was.”

He described graphic scenes of screams from victims and cheers from Hamas militants.

“This was not death from above. It was death in your face, hands-on and personal,” he said. “[Hamas] enjoyed mutilating, and went back and celebrated in the streets with heads and bloody corpses as trophies. This was absolute genocide.”

“Even more important to the terrorists, apparently, was what they left behind,” he continued. “Charred reminders of a holocaust.”

Cuomo said the video proved to him that Hamas never intended to fight for the freedom of Palestinians.

“It is overwhelming that Hamas wanted war. This was not the irrepressible angst of the desperate, who want freedom, who want better or certainly want anything approximating peace,” he said. They wanted the Jews to know that they want them to burn again.”

“I now understand better what is fueling Israel,” he continued. “This is not tit-for-tat … They are fueled by the deepest fears of genocide because those fears are real.”

But Cuomo was careful to not write off criticism over civilian casualties in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli offensive. 

The global community has overwhelmingly urged Israel to better consider Palestinian civilians, and the U.S. — Israel’s closest ally — has pushed the Israeli government to wind down its military operations in the coming weeks.

More than 18,400 Palestinians have died in the war so far, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with as many as two-thirds being women and children. Reports of torture of Palestinian civilians held by the Israeli military have also raised concerns.

“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,” Cuomo said. “If anything, after seeing this video today, there is 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,” he added.

Cuomo also noted, however, that demands for Israel to slow or alter its offensive are more complex than they may appear. The Biden administration has urged the Israeli military to switch to small-scale special forces operations to rescue hostages.

“The suggestion … to stop bombing and use commandos. How does that not suggest to Israel, you have to do this in a way that Hamas can kill more of you?” he said. “It’s not about numbers. It is about Israel being shown its worst fears can be realized, because they were.”

The Hill and NewsNation share a parent company, Nexstar Media Group.