The Exhibition ‘Return to October’ Opens in Israel

Amit Segal is a celebrated journalist in Israel who hosts the television program “Meet the Press” and writes for several newspapers, including Israel Hayom. He recently visited the exhibition “Return to October” at the Intelligence Heritage Center, and wrote about it here: “Amit Segal: The one thing for which Trump did not forgive Netanyahu,” by Amit Segal, JNS, June 20, 2026:

…“The only electrical appliance that Yahya Sinwar hangs around,” Gadi Eisenkot said during the war, “is a 25-watt light bulb, and even that is not certain.” The Hamas leader loathed cellular phones, conveyed his messages on notes or by faxes (!), a recipe for longevity and avoiding assassinations.

It was somewhat surprising, therefore, to discover that the arch-terrorist was shot to death by IDF soldiers while wearing a running watch, the kind that transmits, or can transmit, data on routes, speed in km/h, and other goldmines of intelligence. His belongings, like a change of underwear, a tactical vest and a uniform, appear in a rare, difficult and essential exhibition to visit called “Return to October,” at the Intelligence Heritage Center, somewhere in central Israel. Meters away, they are now renovating the memorial center for the fallen of the intelligence community, including the fallen without a name, or picture, or the circumstances of their falling.

The dark rooms and tunnels where the exhibition is housed manage to recall the depth of the murderousness that burst like a tidal wave of evil into Israel’s borders. There are abduction videos there that have never been seen before. In the corner of one room stands a hoe, as if someone forgot it. And then the horrific clip is screened in which, with that same hoe, a Hamas murderer decapitates a Thai worker while he is still alive. There is unbearable documentation there of a lynch of IDF soldiers in one of the tanks that would become a symbol.

The time that has passed has a tendency to blur and repress the fact that what happened here was an attempted genocide that was simply halted in its tracks after a few hours thanks to the heroism of individuals and the delayed recovery of the Israel Defense Forces. Hamas’s Nukhba terrorists were given abduction kits (zip ties, sedatives, equipment for live broadcasting), instructions for preparing toxic gases “for synagogues, schools and homes” and standard-issue Jihad manuals (fatwas and books explaining why there is an obligation to slaughter Jews). The center’s staff did not locate material ordering rape; this was apparently a spontaneous local initiative by terrorists, against both men and women.

Remember that hundreds of “innocent” Gazans joined Hamas when it smashed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, taking part in all the fun the terror group was having as it tortured, raped, mutilated and murdered 1,200 people. Remember that “innocent” Gazans cheered the returning Hamas heroes, and beat the bodies, both alive and dead, of Israelis who were brought into Gaza draped over the handlebars of motorcycles, or lying helpless and half-naked in the back of flatbed trucks.. The Gazans supported the Hamas attack with every fiber of their being.

If the people of Gaza could do it again, as was done to the Jews by Hamas on October 7, 2023, most of them would gladly do so. They have been raised in murderous hate. This is what the Israelis have to keep ever-present in their minds. As the writer says, Gaza ought to be treated as Nazi Germany was after its surrender in 1945. First, emigration ought to be encouraged, just as millions of ethnic Germans were expelled after the Nazi defeat from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic states.

How many Gazans want to live in their current bleak landscape of endless rubble, which will take a decade to clear if, that is, the rich Arab oil states choose to fund the Strip’s recovery, which is highly doubtful? Let those Gazans move instead out of the Strip to other Arab countries — there are 22 of them— where they will be among people with whom they share a language, a religion, a culture.

Hamas members should be treated as Nazis were by the Allies in 1945. Some should be jailed, and all of them should be deprived of their former positions of power. And, as happened with Nazi schoolbooks, the school textbooks in Gaza have to be rewritten or better, replaced, in order to expunge every trace of antisemitic brainwashing in the schools. Only thus can Israel be expected to tolerate an independent Arab enclave in Gaza.