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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-helicopter-shot-civilians-7-october-rave-police-find">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israeli helicopter shot civilians at 7 October rave, police find</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali Abunimah</a></span> -
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">19 November 2023</span></span> </p>
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<p>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.</p><small>
<span>Polaris</span></small>
<p>An Israeli military helicopter shot civilians at the Supernova rave where Israel says 364 people were killed on 7 October.</p>
<p>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 <em>Haaretz</em> <a href="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">reported</a> on Saturday.</p>
<p>“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,” <em>Haaretz</em> states.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The police investigation reported by <em>Haaretz</em> appears to be
the first direct Israeli official acknowledgment that Israeli forces
killed some of their own civilians on and after 7 October.</p>
<p>But in recent weeks evidence has been mounting that this is exactly what happened.</p>
<p>There is the key <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861">testimony of Yasmin Porat</a>, an Israeli woman who survived a massacre by Israeli forces at Kibbutz Be’eri.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<h2>“Shoot at everything”</h2>
<p>And the Israeli air force has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/shoot-everything-how-israeli-pilots-killed-their-own-civilians">admitted</a>
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.</p>
<p>“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 <em>Ynet</em> reported last month, citing an Israeli air force investigation.</p>
<p>“Shoot at everything,” one squadron leader reportedly told his men.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed0-OxNO_bQ">Video</a>
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.”</p>
<p>And on Thursday, Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-admits-burning-hundreds-people-7-october">admitted</a>
– 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>These are, however, capabilities possessed and used by the Israeli forces who responded to the Hamas assault.</p>
<p>Israel’s recent <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-revises-death-toll-oct-7-hamas-attack-around-1200-2023-11-10/">reduction</a> of its claimed death toll from 1,400 to “around 1,200” people has also raised doubts about its official narrative.</p>
<p>Ever since 7 October, there has been a <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/watch-video-about-7-october-youtube-doesnt-want-you-see">growing</a> <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/">body</a> of <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/">evidence</a> that a significant number of Israelis were killed by their own forces, both from the ground and the air.</p>
<p>Hamas has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861">not denied</a> that Israeli civilians were killed on 7 October, but it has denied that its fighters set out to kill civilians.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Media dereliction</h2>
<p>In support of Israel’s official narrative, Israeli officials and
lobbyists have disseminated multiple false atrocity stories, including
the notorious debunked tale – <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/biden-lied-about-seeing-photos-beheaded-israeli-children">repeated by President Joe Biden</a> – of dozens of beheaded Israeli babies.</p>
<p>But Western governments and media have ignored the evidence that points to major gaps in Israel’s story.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Atrocity propaganda in support of genocide</h2>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/">no forensic evidence</a> confirming such attacks.</p>
<p>“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 <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/world/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-hamas/index.html">reported</a> on Friday.</p>
<p>But Katz said that investigators do not have firsthand testimony and
it is not clear whether any alleged rape victims survived, CNN added.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Immediately after 7 October, Israel launched a propaganda campaign <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/worse-isis-debunking-israeli-propaganda/38941">likening Hamas to ISIS</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-public-support-israel-drops-majority-backs-ceasefire-reutersipsos-2023-11-15/">according</a> to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>While sorting out what really happened on 7 October has until now been left to a handful of independent publications <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yasmin-porat">like The Electronic Intifada</a>, Saturday’s revelation in <em>Haaretz</em> is belatedly drawing international attention to the issue.</p>
<p>Prior to its article on Saturday, <em>Haaretz</em> itself had <a href="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">described</a>
reports that Israel was responsible for at least some Israeli civilian
deaths on 7 October as “conspiracy theories” and “fake news campaigns.”</p>
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