[News] Israel killed Israelis, confirms new 7 October documentary

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-killed-israelis-confirms-new-7-october-documentary>
Israel killed Israelis, confirms new 7 October documentary

Asa Winstanley <https://electronicintifada.net/people/asa-winstanley> Rights
and Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 11 March
2024
------------------------------
[image: A man with a laptop views an image of a war-ravaged home]

Military expert Chris Cobb-Smith says that much of the destruction caused
to Israeli homes on 7 October could not have been done by Hamas.
AJI

A new documentary by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit has found that many of
the most horrific Israeli stories about the Palestinian military assault
that began on 7 October were untrue.

“Misinformation has been used, and sometimes deliberate disinformation has
been used by official spokespersons,” says one commentator quoted in the
documentary, *October 7*.

The film <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jhoAs_O-g> was viewed by The
Electronic Intifada ahead of its first broadcast this week. The video
containing the full Al Jazeera documentary will be added to this page as
soon as it becomes available on YouTube.

Although not the comprehensive investigation by international experts that
many have called for, the documentary does confirm much of the reporting
done about 7 October by a small group of independent journalists, who have
debunked Israeli atrocity propaganda, at the cost of being smeared and
attacked by corporate media
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/whats-behind-washington-post-hit-piece-ei>
.

The Electronic Intifada
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yasmin-porat>, *The
Grayzone*
<https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/27/israeli-tank-orders-fire-kibbutz/>,
*Mondoweiss*
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/we-deserve-the-truth-about-what-happened-on-october-7/>
and *The Cradle*
<https://thecradle.co/articles/how-israeli-forces-trapped-and-killed-ravers-at-the-nova-festival>
have all found that many – if not most – of the 1,154 Israelis the
government claims were killed by Palestinians were actually killed by
Israel itself.

The documentary confirms The Electronic Intifada’s report from January
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october>
that at midday on 7 October the Israeli army invoked the Hannibal Directive
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hannibal-directive>.

As explained in the documentary by Israeli historian Uri Bar-Joseph, “The
Hannibal Directive is an informal protocol that says, we prefer that the
soldier be killed than taken alive.”
Mass Hannibal

As The Electronic Intifada reported in December
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/we-blew-israeli-houses-7-october-says-israeli-colonel>,
one Israeli air force colonel even described 7 October as a “mass
Hannibal.” In its reactivated form, the doctrine seems to have been
extended from soldiers to any Israelis, including civilians.

Al Jazeera’s investigative unit carried out a forensic analysis, examining
seven hours of footage, much of it taken from the head cameras of dead
Hamas fighters. It reviewed the testimonies of hundreds of survivors and
compiled a comprehensive list of victims.

The investigation concludes that at least 27 of the Israeli prisoners in
Palestinian captivity “died somewhere between their home and the Gaza fence
in circumstances that have not been explained.”

It also finds that at least another 18 of the 782 Israeli and foreign
civilians Israel says were killed in the assault were killed by Israeli
ground troops.

While not reaching a definitive conclusion as to how many of the dead
civilians were killed by Israel itself, it does say that, “A number of
other bodies” that were recovered from beneath rubble were of those “who
died in circumstances that are unclear.”

It does also mention the Israeli press reporting – as revealed in English
by The Electronic Intifada in January
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october>
– that 70 vehicles driven by Palestinian fighters returning to Gaza were
blown up by Israeli helicopter gunships, drones or tanks.

These numbers should therefore be taken as a bare minimum in the absence of
a comprehensive, credible and independent investigation of the events of 7
October.

It is likely given the documented use by Israel of heavy weapons such as
tanks and combat helicopters on a large scale that the number of Israelis
killed by their own forces is much higher.

Israel has however refused to allow an independent United Nations team to
enter the country to carry out just such an investigation.
“No way” done by Hamas

The investigative unit also collected footage from the kibbutzim – the
Israeli settlements close to the boundary with Gaza that were assaulted by
Hamas starting on 7 October.

The footage was of both the assault on the settlements as well as of the
aftermath, as widely reported by the Israeli and international media.

Al Jazeera showed this footage to a military expert, former British
artillery officer
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-cobb-smith-34ba264/details/experience/>
Chris Cobb-Smith.

Cobb-Smith concluded that much of the damage could not have been done by
Hamas.

“All the footage I’ve seen of the Hamas assault across the border across
the fence into the [kibbutzim], they’re pretty much only armed with light
weapons,” he says in the documentary. “Rocket propelled grenades and
personal sidearms.”

Shown footage from Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Azza
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/evidence-israel-killed-its-own-citizens-7-october/41156>,
he said that such “catastrophic structural damage” was “clearly not caused
by a structural collapse from a fire” and would have been “caused by some
sort of heavy weapons system during combat. This catastrophic structural
damage to many of these buildings, this can only have happened by heavy
weapon systems being used against the kibbutz itself.”

Shown images of two holes in the wall of a kibbutz house, “I would say
probably by some sort of heavy weapon fired against the house, most
probably a tank,” he explained that “there’s no way an RPG would make that
sort of damage.”

The documentary also supports some of The Electronic Intifada’s debunking
of the Israeli government’s discredited “mass rape” atrocity propganda
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mass-rape-accusation>.

It notes that the recent UN report
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/un-report-launders-israels-fraudulent-mass-rape-propaganda/45021>
on the issue stated that the visual evidence it gathered provided “no
tangible indications of rape” and says that this was “a conclusion
supported by the [Al Jazeera Investigative] Unit’s own analysis of footage
and photographs.”

The report, led by Pramila Patten, helped Israel and *The New York
Times* launder
its atrocity propaganda
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/un-report-launders-israels-fraudulent-mass-rape-propaganda/45021>
through the UN system.

But contrary to much media spin, the Patten report further exposes the
claims of systematic sexual violence as a fraud.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20240312/acb86225/attachment-0001.htm>