[News] Israeli helicopter shot civilians at 7 October rave, police find

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-helicopter-shot-civilians-7-october-rave-police-find>
Israeli helicopter shot civilians at 7 October rave, police find

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> - 19
November 2023
------------------------------
[image: Burned out, overturned bus lies amid debris and trees]

The site of the Supernova rave near Kibbutz Re’im. An Israeli police
investigation has acknowledged that an undisclosed number of the 364
civilians Israeli authorities say died there on 7 October were shot by an
Israeli combat helicopter.
Polaris

An Israeli military helicopter shot civilians at the Supernova rave where
Israel says 364 people were killed on 7 October.

Israeli investigators have concluded that Hamas fighters who crossed the
boundary from Gaza that day had no prior knowledge of the music festival
held near Kibbutz Re’im, an Israeli colonial settlement a few kilometers
east of Gaza, the Tel Aviv newspaper *Haaretz* reported
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-18/ty-article/.premium/israeli-security-establishment-hamas-likely-didnt-have-prior-knowledge-of-nova-festival/0000018b-e2ee-d168-a3ef-f7fe8ca20000>
on Saturday.

“According to a police source, the investigation also shows that an IDF
combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there
apparently also hit some festival participants,” *Haaretz* states.

It does not indicate how many of the festival goers were attacked by the
helicopter. Israel says that altogether 364 people were killed at the rave.

The police investigation reported by *Haaretz* appears to be the first
direct Israeli official acknowledgment that Israeli forces killed some of
their own civilians on and after 7 October.

But in recent weeks evidence has been mounting that this is exactly what
happened.

There is the key testimony of Yasmin Porat
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861>,
an Israeli woman who survived a massacre by Israeli forces at Kibbutz
Be’eri.

According to her account, many Israeli civilians were killed when Israeli
forces opened fire with heavy weapons including tank shells at the small
kibbutz house they were held by Palestinian fighters. Up to that point,
Porat told Israel’s official broadcaster Kan, the Palestinian fighters had
treated the Israeli civilians “humanely.”
“Shoot at everything”

And the Israeli air force has admitted
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/shoot-everything-how-israeli-pilots-killed-their-own-civilians>
that it sent up more than two dozen attack helicopters which fired huge
amounts of heavy cannon shells and American-made Hellfire missiles on 7
October, even though in many cases the pilots could not tell Palestinians
apart from Israeli civilians.

“The frequency of fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the
start, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow their
attacks and carefully choose the targets,” Israel’s *Ynet* reported last
month, citing an Israeli air force investigation.

“Shoot at everything,” one squadron leader reportedly told his men.

Video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed0-OxNO_bQ> released by the Israeli
military shows helicopters targeting what appear to be civilian cars
haphazardly – although at the time the video was released the army claimed
it showed its aircraft shooting at “terrorists.”

And on Thursday, Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev admitted
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-admits-burning-hundreds-people-7-october>
– perhaps unintentionally – in an MSNBC interview that on 7 October Israeli
forces burned to death hundreds of people in indiscriminate fire that did
not distinguish Palestinian fighters from Israeli civilians.

Israel has never explained how Palestinian fighters armed only with light
weapons could have caused the massive devastation seen in some settlements
where houses were reduced to rubble, or burned hundreds of people to death
beyond recognition.

These are, however, capabilities possessed and used by the Israeli forces
who responded to the Hamas assault.

Israel’s recent reduction
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-revises-death-toll-oct-7-hamas-attack-around-1200-2023-11-10/>
of its claimed death toll from 1,400 to “around 1,200” people has also
raised doubts about its official narrative.

Ever since 7 October, there has been a growing
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/watch-video-about-7-october-youtube-doesnt-want-you-see>
body
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/>
of evidence
<https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/>
that a significant number of Israelis were killed by their own forces, both
from the ground and the air.

Hamas has not denied
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861>
that Israeli civilians were killed on 7 October, but it has denied that its
fighters set out to kill civilians.

Determining who was responsible for the deaths would require a thorough,
independent investigation which neither Israel’s international backers, nor
the United Nations, has called for.
Media dereliction

In support of Israel’s official narrative, Israeli officials and lobbyists
have disseminated multiple false atrocity stories, including the notorious
debunked tale – repeated by President Joe Biden
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/biden-lied-about-seeing-photos-beheaded-israeli-children>
– of dozens of beheaded Israeli babies.

But Western governments and media have ignored the evidence that points to
major gaps in Israel’s story.

They have preferred to stick with the official narrative that paints the
Hamas fighters not as resistance warriors whose goal on 7 October was
defeating the Israeli military’s vaunted Gaza division – which they did in
spectacular fashion – but rather as bloodthirsty savages bent on murdering
as many people as possible in the most gruesome ways.
Atrocity propaganda in support of genocide

While Israel has also claimed that Palestinians engaged in widescale and
horrific sexual violence and rapes of Israeli women, Israel has provided
only excuses for why it has come up with no forensic evidence
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/>
confirming such attacks.

“Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers have collected more than
1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks
that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped,” CNN
reported
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html>
on Friday.

But Katz said that investigators do not have firsthand testimony and it is
not clear whether any alleged rape victims survived, CNN added.

Unverified, exaggerated and outright false accounts of Hamas atrocities
have been used to incite and justify Israel’s ongoing genocide of
Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Immediately after 7 October, Israel launched a propaganda campaign likening
Hamas to ISIS
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/worse-isis-debunking-israeli-propaganda/38941>
.

While successful with Western governments and media, Tel Aviv’s propaganda
campaign seems to have fallen flat with the general public, especially as
Israel’s unrelenting slaughter of civilians in Gaza has overshadowed its
attempts to position itself as the victim.

Remarkably, just 32 percent of Americans think the United States should
back Israel as it destroys Gaza, down from an already modest 41 percent a
month ago, according
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us-public-support-israel-drops-majority-backs-ceasefire-reutersipsos-2023-11-15/>
to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

By contrast, 39 percent of Americans want the United States to be a neutral
mediator and 68 percent favor an immediate ceasefire, according to the
survey.

While sorting out what really happened on 7 October has until now been left
to a handful of independent publications like The Electronic Intifada
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yasmin-porat>, Saturday’s revelation
in *Haaretz* is belatedly drawing international attention to the issue.

Prior to its article on Saturday, *Haaretz* itself had described
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-07/ty-article/.premium/denial-of-hamas-october-7-massacre-is-gaining-pace-online/0000018b-aa45-d5aa-a19f-afffabf10000>
reports that Israel was responsible for at least some Israeli civilian
deaths on 7 October as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news campaigns.”
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