Virtual reality headsets transport user to Ground Zero of October 7

The events of October 7 are seared permanently into the mind of every Israeli and Jew. But the scale and brutality of the Hamas attacks have not had the same impact on many others around the world. Whether because of the piecemeal evidence of the carnage, the focus on the hostages, or the ongoing coverage of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, memories of that day have faded for much of the global audience.

In the war for hearts and mind being waged in parallel with the war in Gaza, some of those who are hostile to Israel have even tried to deny that the attacks took place, or tried to minimise their barbarity.

Nimrod Palmach was one of the Israeli responders on October 7, and as he absorbed the depravity of what Hamas had wreaked – to children, young people, women, families, whole communities – he knew that the story of that day had to be told but struggled to think of how the impact of those unimaginable attacks could be conveyed.

Palmach is CEO of a non-political organisation called Israel-Is, which was established in 2017 after its founders saw how negative Israel’s international image was, and set about “improving [its] global image through the Israeli people themselves”.

Combining his sense of personal mission and professional advocacy, he decided that the most effective way to make people understand was to have survivors tell their stories through Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which puts the user right into the landscape of where the attacks occurred.

Last week a demonstration of this VR experience was offered to a range of Jewish advocates and media in Sydney and Melbourne. Those of us who put on the VR headsets found ourselves transported to the Ground Zero of the attacks, where five survivors told their stories in 3D while the user surveyed the destruction and aftermath in 360-degree reality.