A shocking story in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, based on interviews with Israeli soldiers and military officials, has undermined the widespread Israeli narrative which portrayed Hamas fighters as crazed antisemites who murdered 1200 innocent Israeli civilians. Read more.
The Israeli daily Ha’aretz has now confirmed that IDF killed Israeli civilians on October 7th during the fighting with Hamas militants. The Israeli claim that all 1200 Israeli civilians were killed by Hamas fighters has been exposed as wild exaggeration, along with other discredited stories about beheaded babies, and women whose wombs were cut out.
“Haaretz does not know whether or how many civilians and soldiers were hit due to these (Israeli) procedures, but the cumulative data indicates that many of the kidnapped people were at risk, exposed to Israeli gunfire, even if they were not the target.” reported the paper.
Evidence gathered by Haaretz shows that an IDF general ordered a tank to fire on a house in Kibbutz Be’eri where Hamas fighters were holding many Israeli hostages hoping to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Everyone was killed including the Israeli civilians. It also reveals that Israeli helicopters strafed dozens of cars heading for Gaza in which israeli hostages might have been prisoner.
The Hannibal directive does not urge killing Israeli civilians, of course. But it allows the IDF to attack without restraint in situations where Israeli civilians might be taken hostage, even if it puts those Israelis at risk.
Questions about IDF official narrative repeatedly brushed off
Challenges to the Israeli narrative were raised only a month after the events of October 7th by former New York Times journalist Chris Hodges through an independent media outlet called the Grayzone. Further investigation by Electronic Intifada confirmed initial suspicions about the Israeli story but was ignored by Israeli officials and brushed off as “antisemitic fabrications” by most of the Israeli and western media.
In January 2024, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) carried out a forensic analysis of the events of that day – examining seven hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of dead Hamas fighters, drawing up a comprehensive list of those killed on October 7. Its findings were released in a documentary entitled “October 7th” . It confirmed widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel. But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false.
Among other things, the I-Unit revealed that claims by the Israel Defence Force that it found 8 burned babies at a house in Kibbutz Be’eri were entirely untrue. There were no babies in the house and the 12 civilians inside were killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the house. This was one of a number of incidents where the police and army appear to have killed Israeli citizens.
Israel sticking to official narrative despite mounting contradictory evidence
There seems to be general consensus that Palestinian militants did kill unarmed Israeli civilians. They also took over 200 hostages. Both of these are crimes against humanity that have been attested to by various organizations including the International Criminal Court and again most recently Human Rights Watch.
But the confirmation by Ha’aretz that Israeli forces were responsible for many of the deaths has not been denied by the Israeli military. This new information, published by an Israeli paper using information from official source, undermines Israel’s main justification for its current genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Shockingly, the western press, including the CBC, has ignored the Haaretz revelations, preferring to stay with the original Israeli story blaming Hamas for all the deaths.
CBC among those apparently hoodwinked
The Israeli skill in manipulating the western media is remarkable. Veteran CBC reporter Margaret Evans was apparently lulled into sharing an IDF version of events in the Israeli city of Sderot on October 7th, that looks increasingly suspect.
Based on evidence provided by the IDF, Evans reported that Hamas militants had killed about 30 Israelis inside a police station before IDF attacked and destroyed the building using a bulldozer to crush the militants inside.
In her report, Evans did not question why Hamas fighters would kill Israeli civilians and then hide inside a police station where they were sure to be killed by IDF bombs or artillery. It seems much more likely that Hamas fighters were holding hostages in hopes of trading them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and that this was an example of the “Hannibal” directive, with IDF destroying the police station and killing everyone – both Israelis and Palestinians. All the evidence had been destroyed by the time Evans arrived, but she reported the Israeli story as factual.
See Evans’ report here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG7ss3jYKYk
OFIP urges CBC to ensure that Evans and other journalists use great caution in retelling unverified IDF stories to its Canadian audience.
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”responsible for many of the deaths”. The obvious
Israel and the IDF were ”responsible for many of the deaths”… the question is: what proportion. I’m not sure the mainstream media has argued that ALL were killed by Hamas.
Hi Robin,
You are probably right “technically”. But I don’t think I have EVER seen ANY recognition in mainstream media that ANY of the victims might not have been killed by Hamas.
The headline is always about Hamas atrocities on oct 7th. So by implication only Hamas is responsible.
there were at least two reports, Reuters and AP news organizations, although I don’t know who picked them up.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-opens-probe-into-reports-oct-7-friendly-fire-deaths-2024-02-06/ and https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-hostages-investigation-friendly-fire-3b6fdd4592957340b32a8ee71505b8e9. I do remember seeing some reporting but the numbers of victims of friendly fire were very small, not “large numbers”. So I’d still like to know what numbers we are talking about.
In addition to those killed by the IDF itself, there is also the possibility that many were killed by heavily armed Israeli civilians. On the first days after October 7, I heard claims by Kibbutz residents and concert goers about having retrieved their weapons and fighting the attackers. There were also statements by residents saying that they had been caught in the crossfire between armed Israelis and Hamas fighters. These stories have now disappeared and I doubt that we will ever know why they disappeared.
The mainstream media has never mentioned that the IDF killed even a single Israeli on October 7th. Our own mainstream CBC continues to ignore what Haaretz has now covered (which itself is a corroboration of what Electronic Intifada, The Grayzone, and Mondoweiss reported many months ago). I searched CBC’s website with the title of the Haaretz article and got the “No results found” message (https://www.cbc.ca/search?q=IDF%20ordered%20Hannibal%20Directive%20on%20October%207th%20to%20prevent%20Hamas%20taking%20soldiers%20captive§ion=news&sortOrder=relevance&media=all).
At the very least, CBC’s Margaret Evans should make corrections to the story she told Canadians as factual. That is a basic journalistic ethic.