Already we are starting to see clamors to tone down the images of what Hamas has done. The experience of the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks show this looking away to be the wrong thing to do.
At the end of World War II, the U.S. Army did something powerful as it liberated concentration camps in Central Germany and Austria (the Soviet Union liberated the extermination camps that were far worse). The Army made as many of its Soldiers as possible see the atrocities that the Germans had committed. General Eisenhower famously said “We are told the American Soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against.” Further, General Eisenhower had the American and worldwide media film these atrocities in case the world thought what was being reported was an exaggeration.
Perhaps most importantly in many towns the Allied commanders forced the Germans to face what had happened. They made the locals go into the camps and to see the bodies of the murdered Jews, sometimes stacked by the hundreds. In many cases, the U.S. Army also ordered the German civilians to bury those who were murdered. Even after this effort, a sizable number of civilians in the American Occupation Zone in Germany, over double digits in nearly every year of the U.S. administration, believed that Hitler had been somewhat justified in his treatment of the Jews and had strong favorable opinions of National Socialism. Imagine what Germany would be like today if the Allies did not make the German people face what had happened.
The other example of why it is generally not right to censor is regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. On September 11, 2001 people, in the worst of the live television images shown that day, were falling out of the World Trade Center. Very few of these images were shown thereafter, though a few were published in one reputable book as well as shown in the documentary “In Memoriam, New York City, 9/11/01” which largely was focused on that day as seen through the administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani warned us, “We’re gonna have to remember September 11 in its reality...its pushes the human consciousness towards finding ways to avoid this in the future…If you censor it too much….you rob people of the ability to actually relive it and therefore motivate them to prevent it from happening in the future.”
Americans are a humanitarian and righteous people. Obviously, we do not need the images of people who were pushed out, by terrorist evil, out of the World Trade Center or Holocaust images every day on our screens. There is dignity for these victims. But the tendency of the media is to make money off of tragedy and then push it aside, unlike the days when Walter Cronkite signed off with each newscast with whatever number of days it was that American hostages were held in Iran.
In the simplest of terms, Hamas will put their atrocities out there anyway. We, the free people of the world, must do the same but on our terms; not as war porn and certainly protecting our children by not showing them these images but rather remembering these images and showing them responsibly to other adults and older youth. This is to be done so that we are reminded how precious these kids are and need to be defended from ever experiencing firsthand the terror of Hamas and other barbarians. Instead of censoring our own grief we need to relive it so that those on the fence, and the target of the Hamas propaganda campaign, do not falter. If we want to honor the victims’ lives, we must remember their last moments as part of their overall life story; lives that are to be celebrated and names that are to be uttered forever.
The mother of someone killed on 9/11 told me something that captured this sentiment. This woman, one of the most peace-loving women alive, said that after all the rubble at the Pile that was the World Trade Center was sifted through, it all should be brought back to the Site and dumped into the ground so that no one would forget that her daughter was murdered along with nearly 3,000 other innocent people. She wanted her daughter remembered and her grief comforted, but also did not want any other mother to experience what she did.
We must do as the U.S. Army did at the concentration camps at the end of World War II and as Mayor Giuliani urged as after September 11 by documenting and remembering. We must show future generations what Hamas did on October 7. It is from this determination that the vow Never Again lives on.
*Views expressed are those of the author and not any government agency