The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, together with the National Information Directorate, are establishing a secure national archive to preserve the photographs posted on social media from the massacre near Gaza on 7 October, Israel Hayom has learned.
A letter sent by Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director General Avi Cohen-Scali and Public Relations Director Moshik Aviv, the contents of which were obtained by Israel Hayom, indicates that the two wish to assemble into one archive the materials collected since the massacre – a kind of Yad Vashem of 2023 – in the face of attempts by the Hamas terrorist organization and its supporters in recent weeks to conceal documentation of the atrocities from the networks.
The project was launched on 10 October, a few days after the massacre, under the name "Video Matt", with the aim of creating a secure national archive that gathers footage from the terrorist attack from various sources.
The massacre in the envelope: faded in the international consciousness, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
So far, some half a million photos and more than 350,<> videos documenting the massacre have been collected, intended to preserve the harsh evidence of what happened in Israel – both in the face of attempts to deny the events and in order to enable the conviction of terrorists caught alive.
Director General of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs Cohen-Sakli wrote to all the directors general of government ministries that the three goals of the project are "to stop the events of the war, with an emphasis on events with the potential to be erased by the enemy; creating an archive that enables the retrieval and accessibility of materials, for the sake of an international war of consciousness backed by documentation and evidence; and the collection of materials that will enable the construction of legal files proving that Hamas committed war crimes in the terrorist campaign."
The massacre in the village of Gaza. IDF soldiers on a kibbutz near the ruins of a house that caught fire, Photo: GettyImages
In addition, it was written that since the beginning of the testimonies preservation project, massive media collection has been carried out on social networks and from other sources for the benefit of the national effort, and that independent initiatives that acted in a similar manner have been approached with the aim of maximizing content sharing.
Soldiers at the fence in Gaza, photo: uncredited
Extension of state credit
"We call on any government or security entity to transfer additional materials to the secure archive," they wrote, and even suggested that the ministries make use of materials already stored for national propaganda, with the unwritten goal being to extend Israel's political credit to complete the operation against Hamas in Gaza.
Avi Cohen-Scally, Director General of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs: "Already in the first days of the war, we recognized the need for secure preservation of documentation disseminated on various platforms, including of Hamas terrorists at the time of the terrible massacres. It was clear that the time would come for these terrorist organizations to try to conceal materials and lie to the world. The special operation and the database we established meet the propaganda and legal needs of the State of Israel, and there is no doubt that these materials will serve it in this campaign."
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us