Israel to launch new series of heroic stories from Oct 7

Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) will launch a new documentary series this upcoming week, revealing stories of heroism from the unprecedented Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.

Each of the eleven episodes will tell the story of a hero or group of heroes who bravely stood against waves of thousands of armed terrorists, saving lives while under fire, on what should have been a peaceful Simchat Torah holiday and Sabbath morning.

“This new series of heroes attests to the strength of the Jewish and Israeli spirit in the darkest moments we have experienced,” said GPO Director Nitzan Chen. 

“This is the spirit of heroes who did not hesitate for a moment, left the holiday table and went out to save lives. We at the GPO are committed to telling these important stories in order to remember their heroism.”

The moving stories, documented close to the massacre in real-time, will first be presented to foreign media and broadcast via Jewish media outlets worldwide. The series will be made available to the Israeli public at a later date.

Over the past eight months, Israeli media has featured many heroic accounts from the Hamas invasion and terror attack on Oct. 7, including young children who stayed on the phone with emergency service personnel, even after their parents had been killed; kibbutz residents who risked their lives multiple times to save others; and retired army personnel who drove direct to the massacre sites to help.

Aner Shapira, best friend of Hamas captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin – whose parents, Rachel and Jon, have been heroically updating followers daily – was killed while bravely throwing back grenades that were being thrown by terrorists into a small shelter holding 29 young people. 

The upcoming documentary promises a “wide-ranging series in which substantial resources have been invested, including dozens of hours of investigations, filming and editing by professional teams" in order to reveal "the smallest and most important details from these fascinating stories of heroism.”

By the end of October 2023, the GPO had already accredited and approved a record 2,050 international journalists to cover news related to the conflict between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization, which initiated the war on Oct. 7. This number is roughly double the amount of journalists who covered the 2014 Hamas-Israel conflict.

After the initial global horror of the Hamas attack, Israel faced the challenge of proving to the international media what had actually happened. The daily visual images from war-torn Gaza dominated world news headlines, and Hamas officials denied the atrocities against Israeli civilians. This combination necessitated Israel to substantiate its claims to the global press.

“From the moment they are processed until they leave, the GPO provides journalists with all of the horrors, the testimony, the pictures and the voices, all in order to prove the absolute justice of Israel in this war on the world’s media platforms,” Chen said last year. 

At the forefront of Israel’s battle for public opinion has been former Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, who continues to advocate for Israel on his own social media platforms.

“As we work to defeat the terror organization, we are witnessing a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon evolving in real-time as people are casting doubt on the magnitude of the atrocities Hamas committed against our people and in fact recorded in order to glorify this violence,” Levy stated.