Breitbart News’ Joel Pollak Shares Firsthand Account of Israel’s Ground Zero: ‘Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen in My Life’

Kibbutz Be'eri home (Breitbart News)
Joel B. Pollak/Breitbart News
Joshua Klein

Following the unprecedented attack on Israel this month that sent shockwaves throughout the world, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak offered a firsthand account of the Jewish state’s ground zero, providing a detailed narrative of “the worst thing” he has ever witnessed, and “one of the most brutal attacks on civilians that the Western world has ever seen.”

Warning – Graphic content below

Appearing on The Trevor Carey Show on Friday, Pollak explained that during his unexpected yet intensive reporting journey in Israel, he witnessed a range of situations firsthand, contrasting previous speculative coverage from afar.

“I didn’t go to Israel knowing that we were going to see all these things. I went there simply because I wanted to report on what was happening. I felt like a lot of our coverage from far away was speculative,” he said.

‘They had basically murdered everyone they could find’

Pollak expressed frustration over trivial debates on social media, highlighting the gravity of the situation with a vivid description of the events:

You get stuck in the weeds and social media debates and these ridiculous arguments over whether babies were beheaded or not, how many babies were beheaded, does decapitated count as beheaded — these ridiculous debates — because there are people out there who simply can’t accept the reality of what happened on October 7 when more than 1,400 people were murdered, most of them civilians, with the victims including babies, including small children, the elderly, the disabled, and over 200 were taken hostage. 

“It’s one of the most brutal attacks on civilians that the Western world has ever seen,” he added, “and I went there to report on what was going on in Israel, the spirit of the people, and how the military was responding.”

Describing the Israeli government’s immediate action to grant media access to the affected areas, Pollak shared his observations from Kibbutz Be’eri, an enclave in Southern Israel and the site of one of the deadliest Hamas attacks.

“On Sunday morning, they took us to Kibbutz Be’eri… one of several kibbutzim, which are sort of communal farms where people live; often they commute to jobs in the city and that sort of thing. But they’re basically agricultural communities and they are plentiful in that area, because it’s very good farmland,” he said, noting that “the terrorists invaded a lot of these communities, and they slaughtered as many people as they possibly could.”

In his recounting of the events that transpired, Pollak shed light on the brutal attacks faced by several communities, emphasizing the sheer scale and brutality of the terrorists’ onslaught as well as their success against a generally alert Israel. 

“Some of these communities did have armed security, but the terrorists came in such numbers and with such heavy weapons that in most places, the armed security was overwhelmed pretty quickly,” he explained. “Same thing with the army. There’s this idea that the Israeli army didn’t respond. The problem is they did respond, but they were outnumbered something like 12 to one in the initial firefight, and most of the early responders were killed.”

“And then the terrorists for several hours had free rein, and what they did was they slaughtered entire families, they mutilated people, they tortured people, they raped women; and we saw some of the evidence at Kibbutz Be’eri,” he added.

‘There were little kids’ stuffed animals covered in blood… absolutely brutal’

In a chilling recount through his firsthand experience, Pollak depicted the horrifying aftermath of the vicious attack on a peaceful community, highlighting the sheer violence and inhumanity that marked the tragic event:

One of my friends walked into a house where there was still food in the fridge that the family had bought for the weekend, and you walk out of the kitchen into the living room and the children’s room, and there’s blood all over the floor, dried blood now, of course, but there’s blood everywhere. There are stuffed animals where the kids were playing when they were killed. And I walked into the kindergarten; there are bullet holes all through the kindergarten. There’s a little bomb shelter where the people tried to hide, the Hamas terrorists blew an RPG through the wall to get at the civilians. They didn’t just let civilians hide in bomb shelters, they would try to kill them if they could open the door or explode the door with grenades and RPGs and gunfire.

He also provided a similar account of young people seeking refuge during the massacre at the Supernova music festival — where more than 260 participants were killed by Hamas terrorists who paraglided in from Gaza — only to be met with relentless violence from the terrorists. 

“Same thing at the music festival a little further distance. Some of the young people who ran away from the shooting ran into the bomb shelters that are available in public places in that part of the country and the terrorists just opened fire into the doorways or they would lob grenades into the bomb shelters and kill as many people as possible,” he said. 

“So we saw this,” he added. “We saw the evidence of this.”

The next day, he describes being taken with other journalists to a military base to view “raw footage” of the attacks.

“Some of these terrorists filmed the attacks themselves, but there were also videos taken by cell phones both by the perpetrators and the victims,” he said. “Sometimes the terrorists would take the victim’s phone and livestream the deaths to their relatives. There were also surveillance cameras.”

“They have terabytes and terabytes of data,” he added. “And they just showed us some of what they got.”

He then described viewing the footage that revealed those “chilling” moments that unfolded:

To me, the most chilling thing was watching surveillance footage of a father and his two sons who obviously just got woken up because this is early on a Saturday morning and they’re all in their underwear. And the father picks his two sons up, and he tries to run away from the terrorists, and they hide inside the family bomb shelter and a terrorist lobs a grenade into the bomb shelter. He kills the father, and the two boys are then taken into the house by the terrorists; the kids are bleeding, one of them’s lost an eye, and the kids are terrified out of their minds, they’ve just seen their father killed. 

“This is the kind of stuff that they did at these communities,” he added.

‘The worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life’

The following day, Pollak recounted his visit to a military base where specialists faced the grim task of identifying victims, many who endured unimaginable horrors during the attack.

“The next day, the military took us to another base where the Israeli authorities are using forensic specialists to try to identify some of the bodies,” he said. “It’s not always easy to identify the bodies because many of these people were burned alive in their homes.” 

“So if the terrorists couldn’t open up the shelter, couldn’t unlock the door, they would set fire to the house,” he added. “So there were entire families that died together. They were burned alive.”

Addressing the overwhelming challenges faced by forensic specialists in the aftermath of the attack, Pollak painted a haunting picture of both the scale of the attack along with the brutality inflicted upon the victims, as well as the determination and necessity to bear witness to the truth.

“It’s very hard to do a DNA analysis, you’ve got to look at dental records, and other bodies that came and they were mutilated, and so on, and so forth,” he explained. “And there were almost 800 bodies that were processed by this one facility. And they opened up two of the refrigerated trucks where they had body bags of bodies that were still to be identified, and they showed the journalists.”

“They wanted us to see so that nobody could say this didn’t happen, [that] this is made up, [or that] it’s not as bad as what’s happening to Palestinians or whatever,” he added. 

Conveying the “absolute brutality” he witnessed, he compared the scenes to those of the Nazi Holocaust.

“This was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve never seen anything worse, and I’ve been to Holocaust memorials,” he said. “Obviously, the Holocaust is on a much greater scale but this was a Holocaust-type of event.” 

“This was the same kind of event where there was deliberate murder of men, women, children, grandmothers, grandfathers, and in absolute brutality, where the killers look their victims in the face and kill them anyway,” he added. “It’s unbelievable what happened.” 

‘An excitement that went through the pro-Palestinian community’

Insisting that “the horror of what happened cannot be forgotten,” Pollak criticized much of the discourse at recent public demonstrations, especially the lack of accountability for the Palestinian leadership.

“You have these people running around university campuses and in the streets talking about what’s happening to the poor civilians in Gaza — the poor Palestinian civilians,” he said. “I think that we need to be concerned about the civilians but the Palestinian leadership can’t be off the hook for starting a war that starts by killing Israeli civilians, and will necessarily put Palestinian civilians at risk because Israel is going to have to respond in self-defense.” 

“Well, you put them at risk, the leaders of Palestinian society,” he said, as he brushed off “excuses” such as claims that Hamas “didn’t get elected [but rather] took power in a coup or whatever it is.”

He also voiced his concern over the lack of Palestinian leadership willing to publicly disavow Hamas, condemn the October 7 attacks, and prioritize civilian safety.

“What we’re seeing, not just in the region but here in the United States, is that there is no leader in the Palestinian community — not one — who has said: ‘Hamas did not do this in my name.’ ‘I disassociate myself from Hamas.’ ‘We condemn Hamas.’ ‘This is terrible…’’” he observed. 

“But nobody’s saying that,” he added. “Nobody is saying that.” 

Not only were condemnations lacking, Pollak noted, but an “excitement” actually permeated the demonstrations of Palestinian supporters.

“There was an excitement that went through the pro-Palestinian community, and you can see it in the talking points that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) circulated,” he said. “There was an excitement because they thought that Israelis would be so scared by this violence that all the Israelis would run away – this is their dream.” 

“They don’t want to have a two-state solution. They don’t want peace with Israel. They just want to end Israel,” he added. “So when they saw those images of kids running away at the music festival, running for their lives, they thought, ‘Oh, these Israelis are leaving, they’re all running away.’”

‘Israelis believe they’re standing up not just for Israel, but for the whole world’

However, Pollak explained, “the reality is the opposite,” and Israelis are hardly fleeing. 

“When I was on a flight from L.A. to Tel Aviv, the flight was full. All the flights to Israel are full. The American [airline] carriers have canceled their flights but El-Al, the Israeli airline, is still flying [and] all those flights are full,” he said. 

“Israelis are coming back to their country and many of them are young men who were working abroad at the time and they’re coming back to fight for their country,” he added. “They’re not leaving the war zone, they’re coming back to fight.”

In addition, he noted, the Israeli Defense Forces has had “too many” people responding to call-ups for reserve duty. 

“There are units where 120 percent of the people showed up that got called up, because people are eager to join the fight,” he said. “People want to fight, they want to defend the country.” 

“They believe they’re standing up not just for Israel, they believe they’re standing up for the whole world because what happened was a crime not just against Israelis, but it was a crime against humanity,” he added.

Highlighting the challenges faced by the Israeli military in targeting Hamas terrorists, Pollak underscored how the Israelis are “doing their utmost” to eliminate Hamas terrorists while “protecting Palestinian civilians.” 

“There are going to be civilian casualties because Hamas hides behind civilians, but that doesn’t mean you don’t go for them. You do try to avoid the civilian casualties, but under international law, if you’ve got a significant military target who happens to be hiding underneath a hospital, you can go after that target in certain circumstances,” he said. 

“You don’t flatten the hospital, you can find another way of doing it,” he added, “but what they’re doing doesn’t insulate them from accountability.”

Ultimately, he argued, Hamas is “responsible for the Palestinian civilian casualties.” 

“It cannot be that Israel is more responsible for Palestinian civilian casualties than the Palestinians themselves,” he said. “And for some reason, we don’t expect Palestinian leaders to take care of their own children. Somehow that responsibility falls to the Israeli military.”

‘Incredible stories of heroism’

Pollak went on to describe the Israeli people’s determination to enter Gaza and remove Hamas, regardless of “what the world says about it.”

“When you talk to the Israeli soldiers — sometimes civilians who just picked up a pistol and went and joined the fight because they needed to save a relative or they wanted to respond and save a community — there are incredible stories of heroism,” he said. “There were volunteers all over Israel, delivering food to people who were stranded, taking care of orphans who lost their parents.” 

“People are stepping up in the biggest way, but they are determined that this is never going to happen again because what they saw was a Holocaust-level of violence, and they understand that they can either be murdered in their homes, or they can die fighting,” he added.

According to Pollak, Israelis are “not afraid to die fighting” against Hamas. 

“They’re going to the front [and] they’re happy to be going. They know that some of them are going to die in the fight but there’s nothing that’s going to stop them,” he said. “And even if their own government told them… we’re not going to go in after all — they would go in anyway because they cannot tolerate living in fear any longer.”

“Hamas pushed it too far and they made it absolutely clear what kind of people they are, what kind of things they’re going to do, and it has to be stopped,” he added.

‘If you don’t want your civilians to die, don’t start a war’

Addressing an earlier White House briefing where “all the reporters seem to care about [is] how many Palestinian civilians have died,” Pollak declared that “if you don’t want your civilians to die, don’t start a war — and especially don’t start a war by attacking other peoples’ civilians.” 

If Hamas wanted to make a point, they could have raided the Israeli military base on the border, which they did, and they could have left it at that and gone back home. But that’s not what they did. They killed people in that base, often people who were unarmed. There was a group of female draftees who hadn’t been given their weapons yet [and] Hamas slaughtered them as they begged for their lives, and we saw some of this on video as well. But, they are soldiers, so, okay, you attack a military base, you go home. That’s not what they did. They attacked civilians driving on the street, they shot people in their cars — ordinary civilians going to work or coming home. They killed them, they looted them, [and] they raped women, if they could.

“This is what Hamas has introduced into the equation and that’s what these people marching in the street with Palestinian flags are supporting,” he added. “And the reason I say they’re supporting it even if they don’t put two and two together, is they’re not denouncing it and they haven’t denounced it [even] as more and more evidence has come out.”

‘I saw the very best and worst of humanity’

Reflecting on his firsthand experience in Israel, Pollak contrasted the efforts of Israeli soldiers and volunteers with the harrowing brutality of Hamas.

“I went to Israel to report on the situation and I saw the very best of humanity among the soldiers and the volunteers. But I also saw the worst of humanity. And I’ve been… to the concentration camps, I’ve gone on the March of the Living, [I] covered that when the Trump administration sent the first ever American delegation to Auschwitz, to join this annual commemoration,” he said. 

“And when you go to Auschwitz, you learn about the worst things that were ever done to human beings. We saw some of those things again on October 7 and it’s going to change the Middle East, and hopefully for the better,” he added, noting that Hamas will almost certainly be eliminated and Israelis are “prepared to accept a fairly high cost in military lives” to accomplish that. 

Given the implications it holds for both national and global security, Pollak explained that Israel’s fight is happening “because there’s no other choice,” as he called on Americans to “support it because we cannot tolerate that kind of violence coming to our country.”

“What we’ve learned from the past is that if you let these radicals get away with it, then they start trying more and more of it,” he said. “It might not be the same group, Hamas might not come here [because] they’re a fairly localized group, but there certainly are other terrorists who are spreading all over the world.”

“We’ve got a porous southern border,” he added. “We don’t know who’s coming across. We know a lot of people on the terrorist watch list have already come across.”

Pollak reiterated Israel’s responsibility to counteract Hamas’ violent actions in order to prevent a global escalation.

“If Hamas gets away with murdering and torturing civilians, then you will see other groups try to do the same thing in other parts of the world,” he said. “So the Israeli military actually has a duty, as President Biden said — and here, for once, I agree with President Biden — [Israel] has a duty to respond, and they’re going to do it.”

‘The Second Amendment is a guarantee against that kind of attack’

Drawing parallels between the vulnerability of citizens during a recent mass shooting in Maine and the massacre in Israel, Pollak stressed the importance of the need for the Second Amendment for both national defense and public safety.

“We do need a Second Amendment, we rely on the Second Amendment,” he declared. “And there are various reasons Israel doesn’t have a Second Amendment, but right now in Israel they’re figuring out ways to get more weapons in the hands of more civilians because when the terrorists came to these communities, there were weapons on the community property, but they were often locked away.”

“[They] don’t have individual homeowners with weapons,” he added. “Some people have licenses, but only about two percent of the population.”

Highlighting the situation in Israel, where limited civilian access to weapons proved detrimental during the terror attack earlier this month, Pollak said that “it reminds Americans of the importance of the Second Amendment, because Americans can respond to a threat like that if it comes up.”

Regarding supporters of gun control who may claim that such an attack would “never happen” in the U.S., Pollak reminded listeners that the Israelis “didn’t think it would happen in Israel either.” 

“But there was a terror attack and the terrorists knew that these people, in their homes at least, would not be armed,” he said. “Soldiers armed very heavily, security guards armed very heavily — but in their own homes they didn’t have weapons.” 

“So it is a reminder that although we pay a price for a Second Amendment, and that price is a higher level of crime and violence, unfortunately,” he added, “the Second Amendment is a guarantee against that kind of attack.” 

Emphasizing the significance of the right to bear arms in empowering citizens to defend their country, Pollak shared a personal account from Israel to illustrate the point and advocate for responsible gun ownership.

“It’s very important to keep in mind why we have a Second Amendment: because the citizenry of the country will occasionally have to rise up in defense of the country. That’s what happened in Israel,” he said. “Civilians drove toward the fighting — civilians who sometimes had just a pistol.” 

“I talked to one guy who said, ‘I only had a pistol with 10 bullets in a magazine but my plan was to go there, kill a terrorist and then take his AK 47.’ Ultimately, he did get a bigger weapon. Unfortunately, it wasn’t from a dead terrorist. He got to the scene of the fighting and there was a dead Israeli soldier with a heavy machine gun. So he picked up the heavy machine gun and that’s what he used,” he continued. 

Pollak concluded by insisting on the significance of having a “citizenry that has access to weapons.” 

“Obviously, you rule out some people who are too dangerous to themselves and to others, but the Second Amendment is a very, very important guarantee of public safety if it is used properly,” he asserted.

The account comes in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history which saw some 2,500 terrorists burst into Israel by land, sea, and air and gun down participants at an outdoor music festival while others went door-to-door hunting, torturing, shooting, and kidnapping Jewish men, women, and children in local towns.

The massacre resulted in more than 1,400 dead inside the Jewish state, over 5,300 more wounded, and at least 230 hostages of all ages taken.

The vast majority of the victims are civilians and include dozens of American citizens.

The Trevor Carey Show, which broadcasts live from Fresno on FM 96.7 and AM 1400 from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Pacific, is available any time nationwide via iHeartRADIO.

Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

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