What did Israel do on October 7th and why is the media not covering that?
JVL Introduction
This article by Jonathan Cook highlights how mainstream media has reported “as fact” Hamas atrocities that have not been evidenced even while Israel does not allow independent verification to take place; some allegations have been dropped. This is against the most basic of journalistic codes. It has virtually if not entirely ignored how Israel’s response to the attacks led to the deaths of many living in Israel, which Cook covers in some detail here.
Hamas broke international law that day and should be accountable for that; even if the most extreme claims all turn out to be false, civilians were murdered and kidnapped as hostages. However, the media’s working from the “Israel has the right to defend itself” framework is part of what enables the pulverisation of Gaza to take place; Israel is bombing Gaza for what it says Hamas did, so that Hamas remain the terrorist “monsters” to be eradicated at any cost even killing their own citizens.
There are rarely references to the fact that Israel has been breaking international law for many decades and continues to do so. And the right of occupied people to resist not raised at all.
Reproduced with permission of Middle East Eye
LL
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Fri 15 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
Israel-Palestine war: Why is the media ignoring evidence of Israel’s own actions on 7 October?
The BBC and others keep revisiting Hamas crimes that day, but fail to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens
Barely a day has passed since the 7 October attack by Hamas when the western media has not revisited those events, often to reveal what it claims are new details of astonishing atrocities carried out by the Palestinian group.
These disclosures have served to sustain public indignation in the West, and kept Palestinian solidarity activists on the back foot.
In turn, the outrage has smoothed Israel’s path as it has levelled vast swaths of Gaza; killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, most of them women and children; and denied the enclave’s population of 2.3 million access to food, water and fuel.
Critically, it has also made it far easier for western governments to throw their weight behind Israel – and arm it – even as Israeli leaders have repeatedly engaged in genocidal talk and carried out ethnic cleansing operations.
Israel’s intense bombing campaigns have herded nearly two million Palestinians into a small section of Gaza, pressed up against its short border with Egypt, while starvation and fatal disease start to take their toll.
Many of the claims about 7 October have been shocking beyond belief, such as stories that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked another in an oven, carried out mass, systematic rapes, and cut a foetus from its mother’s womb.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even described in graphic detail – and wholly falsely – a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.”
Little evidence
Atrocities were undoubtedly committed that day by Hamas and other gunmen in Israel, as groups like Human Rights Watch have been documenting.
They have continued to occur in Gaza every day since, not least through Israel’s continuing and relentless bombing of civilians, and through Hamas’ refusal to free the remaining Israeli hostages without an exchange of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
But in respect of the more shocking allegations against Hamas promoted by the western media – which have bolstered the case for Israel’s two-month rampage in Gaza – often little or no evidence has been forthcoming beyond claims made by Israeli officials and highly partisan and unreliable first responders.
Last week the BBC and others led again with stories of systematic Hamas mass rapes on 7 October. Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims are being obstructed by Israel.
The media’s amplification of Israel’s version of 7 October continues to breathe life into the Israeli case that wrecking Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified
Nonetheless, once more, coverage of the growing devastation in Gaza was sidelined.
Media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place has operated within strict limits, however. Only claims that support Israel’s narrative about what happened that day are being aired.
A growing body of evidence suggesting a far more complex reality, one that paints Israel’s own actions in a far more troubling light, is being ignored or suppressed.
This deeply dishonest approach from the western media indicates that they are not, as they declare, fearlessly pursuing the truth. Rather, they are regurgitating talking points being fed to them by Israel.
That is not only unconscionable – particularly given Israel’s long track record of promoting lies, both small and large – but it violates all basic journalistic codes.
And, worse still, the media’s credulous amplification of Israel’s version of 7 October continues to breathe life into the Israeli case that wrecking Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified.
Active cheerleaders
Unknown to most western audiences, there has been a steady trickle of evidence from Israeli sources over the past two months implicating Israel’s own military in at least some of the killings attributed to Hamas.
This week the Israeli military finally conceded that it had killed its own civilians on October 7 “in immense and complex quantity”. Given the large numbers, it added with transparent non-logic: “It would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents.”
How is it possible, given their continuing interest in scrutinising the events of 7 October, that none of the western media has picked up on any of this distressing evidence, let alone investigated it?
It is hard not to conclude that the western media are only interested in stories – and largely indifferent to whether they are true or false – that portray Hamas, but not Israel, as the bad guys. That would mean the media are not dispassionate reporters, but have been recruited by Israel as its active cheerleaders.
Israel’s official story, echoed by the western media, is that Hamas had long planned a crazed, barbaric rampage through communities in Israel – driven by a mix of primitive, religious bloodlust and Jew hatred.
The group’s chance to realise this goal came on 7 October, according to the Israeli narrative, when Israel let down its guard momentarily and Hamas broke through the hi-tech fence meant to keep it and Gaza’s other 2.3 million inhabitants permanently imprisoned.
During the breakout, Hamas focused on the slaughter of civilians, killing babies by beheading them and using rape as a weapon of war and defilement. They fired into the homes of neighbouring Israeli communities, often leaving them in ruins and burning their victims alive.
Admittedly, the claim about 40 beheaded babies has been quietly shelved, because there is precisely zero evidence for it. According to Israel’s own published figures, only two infants died that day.
Nonetheless, the media rarely challenge Israeli spokespeople, or western politicians, when they make this long-discredited allegation.
But many of these other allegations are no less evidence-free and need scrutiny too.
Although they are rarely given a voice, Palestinians have their own, alternative narrative of what happened that day – and parts of it are being bolstered by accounts from Israeli sources.
Challenge to official story
In this telling, Hamas long trained for its breakout, and with a strategic aim in mind. The goal was to launch a commando-style assault on four military bases surrounding Gaza to kill or take hostage as many Israeli soldiers as possible, and a similar assault on local Israeli communities to seize civilian hostages.
The aim, according to this narrative, was to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, thousands of whom are in Israeli jails, including women and children, often held without a military trial or even charges.
To the Palestinian public, these prisoners are no less hostages than the Israelis held in Gaza.
Hamas stormed military bases and the Israeli communities of Be’eri and Kfar Azza. That is why about a third of the 1,200 Israelis killed that day were soldiers, police or armed guards – and why many of the 240 hostages were serving in the Israeli military too.
According to most accounts, even Israeli ones, Hamas accidentally stumbled on to the Nova music festival, which had been relocated to an area close to the fence with Gaza. There were unexpected clashes with security guards, while the attack on festivalgoers turned especially chaotic and gruesome.
What did Hamas have to gain from expending so much energy and ammunition on horror-show theatrics rather than its plan to seize hostages?
So why did Hamas depart from its plan by killing so many civilians? And why did it do so in such a savage, gratuitous and time-consuming fashion that involved burning Israelis alive, using its firepower to blast their homes into ruins, and setting fire to hundreds of cars on the highway near the music festival?
What did Hamas have to gain from expending so much energy and ammunition on horror-show theatrics rather than its plan to seize hostages?
For many western leaders and journalists, it appears no rational answer is needed. Hamas – and possibly all Palestinians – are simply barbarians for whom murdering Israelis, Jews or maybe all non-Muslims comes as second nature.
But for those whose minds are less bent by racist assumptions, an alternative picture of events has been steadily cohering, prompted by the testimonies of Israeli survivors and officials, as well as reporting from the Israeli media.
Because they contradict Israel’s official story, these testimonies have been studiously ignored by the western media.
Burned alive
Surprisingly, the person whose statements have most confounded the official narrative is Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In an interview on MSNBC on 16 November, Regev noted that Israel had reduced the official death toll by 200 after its investigations had shown that the charred remains it had counted included not just Israelis but Hamas fighters too. The fighters, burned alive, had been too disfigured to easily identify.
Regev told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan: “There were actually bodies that were so badly burned we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.”
There was an obvious problem with Regev’s disclosure that went unchallenged by the MSNBC interviewer, and has been ignored by the media since. How did so many Hamas fighters end up burned – and in exactly the same locations as Israelis, meaning their remains could not be identified separately for many weeks?
Did Hamas fighters carry out some strange ritual, self-immolating in cars and homes alongside their hostages? And if so, why?
There is a likely explanation, confirmed by an Israeli survivor of the 7 October events, as well as by a security guard, and a variety of military personnel. But these accounts starkly undermine the official narrative.
Shelled by Israel
Yasmin Porat, who fled the Nova festival and ended up hiding in Be’eri, was one of the few to survive that day. Her partner, Tal Katz, was killed.
She has repeatedly explained to the Israeli media what happened.
According to Porat’s account to Kan radio on 15 November, the Hamas fighters in Be’eri barricaded themselves into a house with a group of a dozen or so Israeli hostages – either planning to use them as human shields or as bargaining chips for an exit.
The Israeli military, however, was in no mood for bargaining. Porat escaped only because one of the Hamas fighters vacated the house early on, using her as a human shield, before giving himself up.
Porat describes Israeli soldiers engaging in a four-hour firefight with the Hamas gunmen, despite the presence of Israeli civilians. But not all of the hostages were killed in the crossfire. Israel ended the clash with an Israeli tank firing two shells into the house.
In Porat’s account, when she asked why this had been done, “they explained to me that it was to break the walls, in order to help purify the house”.
The only other survivor, Hadas Dagan, who was lying face down on the lawn in front of the house during the firefight, reported to Porat what happened after the two shells hit the house. Dagan saw both of their partners lying near her, killed by shrapnel from the explosions.
A 12-year-old girl, Liel Hatsroni, who had been screaming inside the house throughout the firefight, also fell silent.
Hatsroni and her aunt, Ayalan, were both incinerated. It took weeks to identify their bodies.
Notably, Liel Hatsroni’s charred remains have been one of the emotive pieces of evidence cited by Israel for accusing Hamas of killing and burning Israelis.
In reporting the deaths of Liel, her aunt, her twin brother and her grandfather, the Israeli news website Ynet stated that Hamas fighters “murdered them all. Afterwards, they set the house alight”.
Confused pilots
Porat’s testimony is far from the only source showing that Israel is likely to have been responsible for a significant proportion of the civilian deaths that day – and for the burned bodies.
The security coordinator at Be’eri, Tuval Escapa, effectively confirmed Porat’s account to the Haaretz newspaper. He said: “Commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
The burnt-out cars at the Nova festival and their occupants appear to have suffered a similar fate. Worried that Hamas gunmen were fleeing the area with hostages in cars, it seems, helicopter pilots were told to open fire, incinerating the cars and all the occupants.
Worried that Hamas gunmen were fleeing the area with hostages in cars, it seems, helicopter pilots were told to open fire, incinerating the cars and all the occupants
There is a likely explanation for this. The Israeli army has long had a secret protocol – known as the Hannibal directive – in which soldiers are instructed to kill any captured comrades to avoid their being taken hostage. It is less clear how this directive applies to Israeli civilians, though it appears to have been used in the past.
The goal is to prevent Israel from facing demands to release prisoners.
In at least one case, an Israeli military official, Col Nof Erez, has stated that “the Hannibal directive was apparently applied”. He called the Israeli air strikes on 7 October “a mass Hannibal”.
Haaretz has reported that police investigators concluded that “an IDF combat helicopter that arrived at the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants”.
In a video released by the Israeli military, Apache helicopters are shown randomly firing missiles at cars leaving the area, presumably on the assumption that they contained Hamas fighters trying to smuggle hostages back into Gaza.
The Ynet news website cited an Israeli air force assessment of its two dozen attack helicopters in the skies above the Nova festival: “It was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians.” Nonetheless, pilots were instructed “to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence” with Gaza.
“Only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose the targets,” the outlet reported.
Another Israeli publication, Mako, noted that “there was almost no intelligence to assist in making fateful decisions”, adding that the pilots “emptied the ‘belly of the helicopter’ in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again”.
In another Mako report, the commander of an Apache unit is quoted stating: “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.” Another pilot recalled of the attack: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at.”
Secrets to the grave
Quite extraordinarily, in reporting the devastation of ravaged houses and burnt and crumpled cars, reporters have completely ignored the visual evidence staring them in the face and simply amplified the official Israeli narrative.
There are plenty of more-than-obvious questions no one is asking – and for which no answers are ever likely to be forthcoming.
How did Hamas wreak such widescale and intense devastation when its fighters’ own videos show them mostly bearing light arms?
Were those carrying basic RPGs capable of accurately tracking and hitting hundreds of fast-moving vehicles fleeing the festival – and doing so from ground level?
Video footage from Hamas body-cams shows cars leaving the Nova festival with both gunmen and hostages inside. Why would Hamas risk incinerating its own people?
Given Hamas’ keenness to film its triumphs, why is there no footage of such actions? And why would Hamas waste its most prized ammunition on random attacks on cars rather than save it for the far more difficult task of attacking Israeli military bases?
Israel appears not to be interested in investigating the burnt-out cars and wrecked homes, possibly because it already knows the answers and fears that others may one day find out the truth too.
With religious organisations demanding that the cars be hurriedly buried to preserve the sanctity of the dead, the metal skeletons will take their secrets to the grave.
Grotesque fables
What seems certain from this growing body of evidence – and from the trail of visual clues – is that on 7 October many Israeli civilians were killed either in the crossfire of gun battles between Israel and Hamas or by Israeli military directives to stop Hamas fighters returning to Gaza and taking hostages with them.
This week, an Israeli commentator in the Haaretz newspaper called the testimonies “earth-shattering”, and added: “Was the Hannibal directive applied to civilians? An investigation and public debate need to happen now, no matter how difficult they are.”
But as the army has made clear, it has no intention to investigate when its whole genocidal campaign against Gaza is premised on lurid claims that appear to bear a limited relationship to reality.
Israel and its supporters have concocted grotesque fables to present Palestinians as bloodthirsty savages
None of that justifies Hamas’ atrocities, especially the killing and taking hostage of civilians. But it does paint a very different picture of that day’s events.
Remember, Israel and its supporters have sought to compare the Hamas attack on 7 October with the Nazi Holocaust. They have concocted grotesque fables to present Palestinians as bloodthirsty savages deserving of any fate that befalls them.
And those fables have served as the basis for western indulgence and sympathy for Israel as it has carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.
The truth is it would have been much harder for western governments to sell Israel’s rampage in Gaza to their publics had Hamas’ crimes been seen, sadly, as all too typical of modern militarised confrontations in which civilians become collateral damage.
What western governments and institutions should have done is demand an independent investigation to clarify the extent of Hamas atrocities that day rather than echo Israeli officials who wanted an excuse to trash Gaza and drive its inhabitants into neighbouring Sinai.
The western media’s performance has been even more dismal – and dangerous. It professes to be a watchdog on power. But it has repeatedly amplified the Israeli occupier’s evidence-free claims, peddled libels against Palestinians with little or no scrutiny, and actively suppressed evidence challenging Israel’s official narrative.
For that reason alone, western journalists are entirely complicit in the crimes against humanity currently being perpetrated in Gaza – crimes being committed right now, not two months ago.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net
Regev told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan: “There were actually bodies that were so badly burned we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently, they were Hamas terrorists.”
If there were bodies that were so badly burned they couldn’t be identified visually, it doesn’t make sense that they – Israel – would think/assume they were theres. And they obviously knew THAT when they released the 1,400 figure, a few days after the attack. But why not inflate the figure anyway in so far as they can, and then ‘amend’ it later. Some FIVE weeks or so later, as it transpired! And I wonder how many other people were burnt and charred beyond recognition?? I think we can safely assume that we’ll never find out!
Anyway, something occurred to me yesterday: As I’m sure most people know, initially the Israeli authorities said that 280 people who attended the Nova music festival were killed, and then about six weeks later the figure suddenly went up to 360 something, without explanation (and they were obviously burnt and charred beyond recognition and had to be identified by their DNA as well, which obviously took some time to do). But WHAT occurred to me yesterday is that the additional 80+ were never added to the overall number of Israelis killed in the attack, which remained at 1,200, and still does. And the obvious reason why they ‘disappeared’ them is because they exaggerated the number killed in the initial figure they released – ie the 1,400 figure, that is.
Little chance for commentary on your comprehensive piece. However, my ancestors fled persecution in Russia and settled in Manchester. Balfour was racist, didn’t like the influx from Russia and the Aliens Act was passed to limit it. As a staunch Presbyterian he believed the Bible foretold Jewish ‘return’ to Palestine. Before 1967 I Israel had worked out an entire apartheid ‘legal’ mechanism for subjugating Palestinians and appointed staff to operate it. The eventual aim was a Greater Israel.
The mission was to attack and destroy military targets and to seize as many hostages as possible
It appears there were individual incidents of atrocities, nothing compared to the IDF deliberately slaughtering their own in far greater numbers on the day or to the Genocide unleashed since on the Palestinian people
Time to ask for a ruling from the regulators on how to deal with Israeli propaganda
Never again should anyone be allowed to dehumanise another people
None of us would like to be subjected to the type of violence that occurs during events such as these reflected on here. But the constant absenting of the provocations of colonial conquest and racism domination involved plus the hypocrisy of western hypocrites attempting to take the moral high really take the biscuit.
If Hamas were to genetically alter themselves to appear white/western, call themselves Americans, subject their captives to Nazi drowning tortures, while calling their place of victim incarceration Guantanamo Bay, the BBC et al would be spinning the Nazi torture practices, as mere ‘waterboarding’ as if it was a relatively harmless leisure activity.
And of course, as Jonathan is no doubt aware, the smearing language of ‘barbarian death cults’ to describe indigenous peoples resisting colonialism, has been used to great effect by the British in India, Malaysia, and Kenya – in the latter the people were not described as Kenyans or tribal Kikuyu but as Mau, Mau. Just as the name Hamas is used to obliterated the humanity of Palestinians.
Than for reproducing this. It should be obvious that Israel is using the Oct 7th attacks to justify its genocide in Gaza – and therefore exaggerates or invents atrocities. We must argue for a full and independent inquiry into these events but it is unlikely that Israel will agree to it.
So many official narratives are seriously misleading or downright false.
We have just passed the 35th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing. In reality, the bombing was probably done by the CIA.
The CIA has been heavily involved in drugs for a very long time and has acquired the nickname of the Cocaine Import Agency. Aboard the plane was a group of personnel from the DIA, the Pentagon’s own intelligence agency, headed by Major Charles McKee. He was staunchly anti-drugs and may well have clashed with the CIA.
The following quote comes from a Guardian article from 2001 written by John Ashton and Ian Ferguson (Flight from the Truth: Lockerbie Plane Bombing). Sadly, it is unlikely that the Guardian would publish anything like that today. Nor does it print any longer stories that contradict the official (and untrue) account of the Robert Kennedy assassination for which Sirhan Sirhan was framed.
“Among the Lockerbie victims was a party of US intelligence specialists, led by Major Charles McKee of the DIA, returning from an aborted hostage-rescue mission in Lebanon. A variety of sources have claimed that McKee, who was fiercely anti-drugs, got wind of the CIA’s deals and was returning to Washington to blow the whistle. A few months after Lockerbie, reports emerged from Lebanon that McKee’s travel plans had been leaked to the bombers. The implication was that Flight 103 was targeted, in part, because he was on board.”
Always good and informative and reasoned. Thank you Jonathan. I had a sinking heart when I first heard the news on Oct 7th but very soon, sensed that I was being fed
ridiculous propaganda. Of course, it is all tragic but painting Hamas as mad and monstrous is a futile exercise. People no longer really believe what Israeli government officials say.
Here we have an excellent fact-filled article. Thank you Jonathan Cook & JVL. Among the facts presented, one of the most disturbing is the way in which our British free press tries so hard to avoid studying the facts. In my observation, our trusted BBC, as it calls itself on its nicely oiled website, is one of the most effective at spreading politically motivated whoppers and dodging awkward facts. This in itself is a fundamental fact of modern life.
I would like to re-present an obvious fact about the Hamas day of infamy, in that the Israeli authorities must have known about it in advance. Like so much, this probability was briefly broadcast on our media – once and never again. It is well known that Israel has sophisticated listening devices that are constantly spying on the Palestinians. These are devices developed in Israel and sold around the world – to repressive regimes, that is. The allegation is shocking, one of the reasons why it is dodged by our mass media, but it is ever so obvious. As to why the Hamas incursion happened so easily, please, everyone, consider the extremist nature of the Israeli government of virulent political zionists, aggressive settler backers and politicised religious cranks, headed by a political twister who needs a deep war to keep ahead of justice.
The best way to find out what is actually happening is to watch Al Jazeera TV on Freeview 235. Their journalists and camera men and women are in Gaza, on the ground, filming what is happening live, the bombing by Israel, the rows of dead bodies being buried, interviewing people who have been made homeless and injured, showing the massive destruction and crowded refugee tents and hospitals full of thousands of people needing treatment and shelter, and reporting what the UN human rights people, the UN refugee people, the World Food Programme people, the World Health Organization people, the Red Cross people, the ambulance medics, the hospital medics, the grandmothers, the pregnant women and even the children who have lost their families are all saying. As well as a few Hamas spokespeople. Straight to the cameras. Israel has been committing genocide daily, massacring mostly women and children, and violating every human right and humanitarian law known to humankind. And the US government is supporting it, making it possible, supplying the bombs and all the other military death instruments.
What a very ‘Western Liberal Right v Wrong’ article. With Guilty and Innocent and Rationality… What no one gets is that… this is a Holy War by the Islamists against Israel and by the Israeli Right against Gaza. It’s a war that goes back to the Crusades and to the Bible. All the talk of ‘consideration ‘is so much PC ‘blather’. This is the ME, where Egyptians kill Egyptians, where Syrians and Iraqis kill Syrians and Iraqis, and where Sunni Kills Shia. So Israel kills Gazans and flattens Gaza using AI planning just as Hamas kills Israelis after raping them… This is a return to medieval ancient holy war by both sides. Haven’t you understood that yet? Ever since Khomeini started the Islamic Revolution it’s been Holy War. Ever since 1947 its been Holy War. The Allies bombing Germany and Japan was Holy War. There is no legality here except for lawyers and academics. Israel wants Hamas out of Gaza and Gaza Israeli. Hamas wants Israel destroyed and Palestine liberated. Then Egyptians and Syrians would occupy Palestine in place of Israelis. Because Hamas Palestine would threaten both Egypt and Syria. This is The Middle East… Not Western Europe or the Western civilisation.