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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October</h1>
<p class="gmail-node__submitted">
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/asa-winstanley">Asa Winstanley</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publisher"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada">The Electronic Intifada</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">7 October 2024</span></span> </p>
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<p>Taking a selfie at the Tekuma “car cemetery.” Israel says that more
than 1,000 vehicles were destroyed — often with Israeli captives inside
— on and soon after 7 October 2023. But the evidence shows that many of
these bombings were carried out by Israel itself, under its deadly
“Hannibal Directive.”</p><small>
<span>UPI</span></small>
<p>One year ago today Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an unprecedented military offensive out of the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>The immediate goal was to inflict a shattering blow against Israel’s
army bases and militarized settlements which have besieged Gaza’s
inhabitants for decades – all of which <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654492">are built on land</a> that Palestinian families were expelled from in 1948.</p>
<p>The bigger goal was to shatter a status quo in which Israel, the
United States and their accomplices believed they had effectively
sidelined the Palestinian cause, and to bring that struggle for
liberation back to the forefront of world attention.</p>
<p>“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas called it, was, by any objective military measure, a stunning success.</p>
<p>It was said at Israel’s military headquarters that day that “the Gaza Division was overpowered,” a high-level source present <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october">later recalled to Israeli journalists</a>. “These words still give me the chills.”</p>
<p>Covered from the air by armed drones and a barrage of rockets – which
opened the offensive at 6:26 am exactly – Palestinian fighters launched
a lightening raid over the Gaza boundary line.</p>
<p>The army bases were conquered for hours. Some of the settlements still had an armed Palestinian presence two days later.</p>
<p>The military communications infrastructure was instantly smashed. Simultaneous attacks took place by land, air and sea.</p>
<p>Palestinian drones took out tanks, guard posts and watchtowers.
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Caught completely unprepared, most of the soldiers manning the bases
were either killed or captured and taken back to Gaza as prisoners of
war.
<p><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-explains/2023-10-22/ty-article-magazine/hostages-held-by-hamas-the-names-of-those-abducted-from-israel/0000018b-55f8-d5d2-afef-d5fdd04e0000">A reported 255</a>
Israelis were captured, including soldiers and civilians. Since then,
154 of them have been released, mostly by Hamas in November’s prisoner
exchange.</p>
<p>However, the figure of those released also includes some bodies of
dead captives, mostly killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza. Of the
remaining 101 prisoners, 35 have been officially declared dead by
Israel. The real number is likely much higher.</p>
<p>Many have been killed by Israeli carpet bombing, and three escaped prisoners <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67745092">were shot dead</a> by Israeli ground troops in Gaza City in December.</p>
<p>Al-Aqsa Flood was the first time in history that Palestinian armed
groups were able to retake Palestinian territories lost since 1948,
however briefly.</p>
<p>Israel’s response was also unprecedented, if not in its nature then undoubtedly in its scale – an <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-security-cabinet-member-calls-north-gaza-evacuation-nakba-2023/0000018b-c2be-dea2-a9bf-d2be7b670000">undisguised genocide</a> against the population of Gaza.</p>
<p>One “conservative” estimate <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext">published by the British medical journal</a> <em>The Lancet</em>
in July stated that as many as 186,000 Palestinians are likely to have
been killed by Israel so far – almost 10 percent of Gaza’s population.</p>
<p>The UN <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/03/about-90-of-people-in-gaza-displaced-since-war-began-says-un-agency">says that 90 percent</a> of people in Gaza have been driven out of their homes by Israel and that about a quarter of all structures in the strip <a href="https://apnews.com/scars-of-war-0000019256a2d640a5fef6ba634b0000">have been destroyed</a>.</p>
<p>The Western press took its lead from official Israeli disinformation. It was soon awash with <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/atrocity-propaganda">lurid atrocity propaganda</a>.
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These <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mass-rape-accusation">lies about rape</a> and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israeli-colonel-invented-burned-babies-lie-justify-genocide/47011">beheaded babies were</a> swiftly debunked by The Electronic Intifada and a small group of other independent media – often at the cost of being <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/whats-behind-washington-post-hit-piece-ei">smeared by mainstream media</a> and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/day-341-britains-outsize-role-israels-genocide">banned or censored</a> by social media giants like YouTube.
<p>Trying to paper over the cracks of its military and intelligence
defeat, Israel has also been desperate to cover up another major
scandal.</p>
<p>That Israel killed hundreds of its own people between 7 and 9 October 2023.</p>
<p>The regime ideologically justified this within Israeli society using a <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-national-murder-suicide-pact/46006">well-established national murder-suicide pact</a> known in Israel as the “<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hannibal-directive">Hannibal Directive</a>.”</p>
<p>The Electronic Intifada today presents a full overview of how Israel
killed so many of its own people during the Palestinian offensive.</p>
<p>This article is based on <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/7-october-investigations">a year’s worth of The Electronic Intifada’s investigative reporting</a>,
extensive monitoring and translation of the Hebrew-language Israeli
media, independent examination of hundreds of videos, a recent <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/we-will-dance-again-oct-7-nova-music-festival-massacre-footage-1236008540/">pro-Israel film</a>
broadcast by the BBC and Paramount+ about the Supernova rave, official
Israeli figures of the dead and a little-read UN Human Rights Council
report.</p>
<p>We can conclude that during the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive:</p>
<ul><li>Israel expanded the use of its murderous “Hannibal Directive” –
designed to prevent soldiers from being taken alive as prisoners of war –
by killing many of its own civilians.</li><li>The use of such “Hannibal” strikes are confirmed in a UN report published in June.</li><li>Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops
was deliberately undertaken in order to prevent Palestinian fighters
from taking live Israeli captives who could be exchanged for Palestinian
prisoners.</li><li>At the initiative of the local Gaza Division, “Hannibal” was carried
out right away: less than an hour after the Palestinian offensive
began.</li><li>By midday, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october">an unambiguous order was given</a>
from the high command of the Israeli military (the so-called “Pit”
headquarters, deep under Israel’s Hakirya building in downtown Tel Aviv)
to invoke the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if
this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the
region, including the captives themselves.”</li><li>This bombing of Israeli captives by Israel continues in Gaza even today.</li><li>Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in a December
meeting with released captives and families of captives that they had
been “under our bombardments” in Gaza.</li><li>Hundreds of Israelis were likely killed by Israel itself in “Hannibal” targeting incidents as well as unintentional crossfire.</li><li>Israel has been engaged in an aggressive cover-up of its crimes against its own people.</li></ul>
<h2>Killing their own people</h2>
<p>If Hamas made a miscalculation in the planning of Operation Al-Aqsa
Flood, it was perhaps to overestimate the value Israeli planners
assigned to the lives of their own people.</p>
<p>In 2006, Hamas <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-shows-captured-israeli-soldier-gaza-barbecue">successfully captured</a> Israeli occupation soldier <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gilad-shalit">Gilad Shalit</a>,
exchanging him for 1,024 Palestinian prisoners in 2011 – including the
current leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar. A similar exchange was made with
the Lebanese resistance in 2008.</p>
<p>Although exchanging prisoners is a common element of conflict,
Israeli leaders felt weakened and embarrassed by what they saw as
compromises. So they secretly modified their policies, preparing to
strike with lethal force <em>against their own people</em> in the event of future captures.</p>
<p>At the heart of these plans was the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hannibal-directive">Hannibal Directive</a>, established <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-national-murder-suicide-pact/46006">in secret by Israeli generals</a> in 1986, and named after <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hannibal-Carthaginian-general-247-183-BCE">an ancient Carthaginian general</a> who killed himself rather than be captured alive by the Roman Empire.
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Initially, the doctrine was targeted at soldiers.
<p>In 2014, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israeli-army-deliberately-kill-its-own-captured-soldier-and-destroy-gaza">captured Israeli soldier Hadar Goldin was killed</a> in a deliberate artillery strike during Israel’s August invasion of the Gaza Strip. Up to 200 Palestinian <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-intentionally-killed-civilians-after-soldiers-capture-gaza-amnesty">civilians were killed</a> in the bombardment on Rafah, including 75 children.</p>
<p>As a result, the secretive military doctrine was forced into the light. Despite continued obfuscation, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-officer-admits-ordering-lethal-strike-own-soldier-during-gaza-massacre">the Israeli military admitted</a> that the directive existed and may have been used on an Israeli solider.</p>
<p>Two years later, the Israeli military distanced itself from the
directive, claiming that “the order as it is understood today” would be
canceled. “This move was not necessarily a full change in policy but a
clarification,” <em>The Times of Israel</em> <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-puts-an-end-to-contentious-hannibal-protocol/">reported</a> in 2016.</p>
<p>Yet multiple Israeli press reports have now confirmed that Hannibal
was not only reactivated on 7 October – if it ever truly went away – but
was actually <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/released-captive-tells-how-israeli-fire-killed-kibbutz-resident/45121">extended to captured Israeli civilians on their way to Gaza</a>.</p>
<h2>Bombing Israelis on the road to Gaza</h2>
<p>Overestimating Israel’s humanity, Hamas may have been ignorant of
this possibility in its two-year preparation and training for the
offensive. Over the past year, the group has repeatedly agreed to
exchange Israeli prisoners for Palestinian prisoners.</p>
<p>But aside from the Israeli <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/joy-and-pain-outset-four-day-pause-and-prisoner-exchange">captives</a> released <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/gaza-truce-extended-israel-threatens-even-bigger-attack">during</a> the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/gaza-truce-extended-another-day-amid-intense-pressure">four-day pause in November</a>
(including the children and noncombatant captives) Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adamantly refused to make a deal.</p>
<p>Instead, Israel has systematically bombed every part of the Gaza
Strip – including areas where the Israeli captives are being held.</p>
<p>Israelis released in the November prisoner exchange have told the
media that the main threat to their lives while they were held in Gaza
was not Hamas, but Israeli attacks.</p>
<p>Chen Almog-Goldstein and three of her children were at one point held in a Gazan supermarket which was bombed by Israel.</p>
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<p>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December admitted in a meeting
with the relatives of Israeli captives held in Gaza that they had been
“under our bombardments”. (<a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hkp00rchsp">Ynet</a>)</p>
<p>“It was atrocious,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/03/we-were-constantly-in-terror-israeli-hostage-tells-of-captivity-in-gaza">she told</a> <em>The Guardian</em>. “It was the first time we really felt like our lives were in danger.”</p>
<p>The bombing “was closing up on us to the point where the Hamas guards
put mattresses over us on the floor to cover us, and then they covered
us with their bodies to protect us from our own forces’ shooting.”</p>
<p>In a town hall-style meeting with relatives of the captives, Benjamin
Netanyahu admitted that captives had been “under our bombardments and
our [military] activity there,” Hebrew news site <em>Ynet</em> <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hkp00rchsp">reported</a> in December.</p>
<p>“Every day in captivity was very hard,” one former detainee said at
the angry meeting. “I was in a house when there were bombardments all
around. We were sitting in tunnels and we were very afraid that, not
Hamas, but Israel would kill us, and then they’ll say: ‘Hamas killed
you.’”</p>
<p>Another released detainee said: “The fact is that I was in a hideaway
that was bombed, and we had to be smuggled away, and we were injured.
Not to mention that we were shot at by a helicopter when we were on our
way to Gaza … You are bombing the tunnel routes exactly in the area
where they [the other captives] are.”</p>
<p>As the second released detainee’s testimony about being shot at by a
helicopter on the way to Gaza proves, the captives were also killed and
attacked by Israel while Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was still happening.</p>
<p>Within the first hour of the offensive, Israeli forces began shooting and bombing Israeli captives on their way to Gaza.</p>
<h2>“Hannibal at Erez”</h2>
<p>An <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000">investigation by Israeli newspaper <em>Haaretz</em></a>
based on documents and testimonies of soldiers found evidence that
these Hannibal attacks came at least as early as 7:18 am – only 52
minutes after the start of the offensive.</p>
<p>The <em>Haaretz</em> piece was published in English in July.</p>
<p>But the paper lagged six months behind its competitor, <em>Yedioth Ahronoth</em>. In January, <em>Yedioth’s</em> weekend supplement <em>7 Days</em> <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october">ran a landmark investigative piece</a> laying out a timeline of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive from the Israeli military perspective.</p>
<p>The paper has never published an official English translation of the
article. The Electronic Intifada remains the only publication in the
world to release a full professional translation, which you can <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october#translation">read here</a>.
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The <em>7 Days</em> investigation found that “at midday of October 7th,
the IDF [Israeli military] instructed all its fighting units to perform
the Hannibal Directive in practice, although it did so without stating
that name explicitly.”
<p>Well-sourced Israeli military and intelligence reporters Ronen
Bergman and Yoav Zitun explained in the long piece that “the instruction
was to stop ‘at any cost’ any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to
Gaza, using language very similar to that of the original Hannibal
Directive.”</p>
<p>In contrast to the <em>7 Days</em> investigation, the more recent <em>Haaretz</em> piece found that the name of the doctrine <em>was</em> explicitly invoked – and very early on: “One of these decisions was made at 7:18 am … ‘Hannibal at Erez.’”</p>
<p>Erez is the massive Israeli military checkpoint and base caging
Palestinians into the north of the Gaza Strip. It had been totally
overrun by Palestinian fighters and besieged Israeli troops seem to have
called for an airstrike on their own position.</p>
<p>That the <em>7 Days</em> investigation reached the conclusion Hannibal was invoked from the top of Israel’s military hierarchy is crucial.</p>
<p>It shows that the reactivation and expansion of the Hannibal
Directive that day was not a matter of rogue individual troops or of
simple chaos and confusion.</p>
<p>It was a matter of policy.</p>
<h2>Orders and chaos</h2>
<p>Hannibal was ordered from the top after the generals under the
Hakirya building in Tel Aviv realized that Israeli soldiers and settlers
all over the Gaza frontier region were being captured en masse.</p>
<p>They wanted the captives dead as soon as possible.</p>
<p>Israeli troops in the field had been trained in the procedure for years and immediately understood what they had to do.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-attacks-7october2023-report-10jun24/">A report</a> by a UN commission quotes one tank commander who opened fire at Israeli captives coming from the settlement of Nir Oz.</p>
<p>“Something in my gut feeling made me think that they [his soldiers]
could be on them [the vehicles heading to Gaza],” he said. “Yes, I could
have killed them, but I decided that this is the right decision. I
prefer stopping the abduction so they won’t be taken.”</p>
<p>Ending Israelis’ captivity by killing them is the Hannibal doctrine in a nutshell.
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In November last year, Nof Erez, an Israeli Air Force colonel, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/we-blew-israeli-houses-7-october-says-israeli-colonel">admitted to a Hebrew-language podcast</a> that the response to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood “was a mass Hannibal.”
<p>There was also an incredibly chaotic situation that day. In a separate article by Yoav Zitun, the Israeli military <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-admits-immense-amount-friendly-fire-7-october">admitted to an</a> “immense and complex quantity” of what it called “friendly fire” incidents.</p>
<p>Caught entirely off guard over a Jewish holiday weekend, Israeli
forces found themselves unable to communicate with each other after the
Palestinians destroyed the communications infrastructure.</p>
<p>The <em>7 Days</em> investigation found that “40 percent of the
communication sites such as towers with relay antennas … near the Gaza
Strip … were destroyed by Hamas” that morning.</p>
<p>Even the Palestinian resistance was caught off guard by the sheer
scope of its own success. And, to an extent, there was a degree of chaos
in the Palestinian fighters’ assault.</p>
<h2>Collateral damage?</h2>
<p>Soon after the initial wave of Hamas’ vanguard commandos (known as
the Nukhba force, Arabic for “elite”) breached the fence in almost 50
locations, smaller armed groups – including Islamic Jihad and the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – joined in.</p>
<p>About an hour after the offensive started, a wave of Palestinian
civilians began to flow through the breaches in the fence and managed to
enter their homeland. Some of these people seem to have attacked or
captured Israeli noncombatants in the militarized settlements that
surround Gaza.</p>
<p>The chaotic situation, combined with Israel’s use of its own
civilians as human shields to besiege and occupy Gaza also meant that
not all the Israeli casualties of the Palestinian resistance that day
were combatants.</p>
<p>Despite efforts by the Western media and politicians to <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/biden-lied-about-seeing-photos-beheaded-israeli-children">paint a picture of evil, baby-killing Palestinian “terrorists” rampaging</a>
around southern Israel slaughtering as many civilians as possible, it
is clear that Israeli noncombatants were often caught in the crossfire
between armed Israeli forces and the Palestinian fighters.
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Pitched battles broke out all over the region. Roughly 1,000-3,000 Palestinian fighters are estimated to have been involved.
<p>Despite the common misconception that the Israeli army was nowhere to be found that day, the UN report and the <em>7 Days</em> investigation concluded that Israeli combatants were present all over the region, and from very early on.</p>
<p>Within the first 24 minutes of the assault, the Israeli military
scrambled at least six armed aircraft: two F-16 bombers, two F-35
bombers and two of the lethal Hermes 450 drones made by Elbit Systems.</p>
<p>Two more aircraft – Apache attack helicopters – also arrived at the Be’eri settlement within one hour.</p>
<p>The UN report says that it “confirmed that at least eight Apache
helicopters were dispatched to the area around the Gaza border on 7
October” and that “some 23 tanks were stationed throughout the whole
border area with Gaza” (Editor’s note: in fact, Israel has no declared
borders).</p>
<h2>Human shields</h2>
<p>But there is also no doubt that the Israelis were overwhelmed,
briefly outgunned and often outsmarted by the Palestinian fighters. The
battle for Kibbutz Be’eri, for example, continued over the course of
three days.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the presence of armed Israeli combatants embedded
throughout the civilian population – often using the latter as effective
human shields – speaks to the operational challenges faced by Hamas on
the ground that day.</p>
<p>The UN report even documents some cases of Israeli “civilians”
picking up weapons to engage in clashes with the Palestinian fighters.</p>
<p>Hamas’ deputy political leader Khalil al-Hayya <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cdd4rpv5jp0o">said in an interview</a> with the BBC <a href="https://x.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1842141286905630762">last week</a>
that its fighters had been told not to target civilians during the
assault, but that there were individual failings in sticking to that
plan.</p>
<p>He also alluded to the military difficulties faced by Palestinians
trying to distinguish who was who: “Fighters may have felt that they
were in danger.”</p>
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<p>In <a href="https://x.com/IranObserver0/status/1711818740654866519">a video released by</a>
Hamas’ armed wing on 10 October 2023, the Al Qassam Brigades showed how
they had swiftly taken over the Nahal Oz military base three days
earlier, supported from the air by sophisticaled but inexpensive drone
technology. The base straddles the boundary line with Gaza.</p>
<p>In “Our Narrative,” a <a href="https://archive.org/details/operation-al-aqsa-flood-our-narrative">document</a> Hamas <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-faults-happened-7-october-first-report-since-war">released in January</a>,
the group admitted, “Maybe some faults happened during Operation
Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli
security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border
areas with Gaza.”</p>
<p>One such “fault” was the fact that Hamas’ intelligence branch seems
not to have anticipated the presence of the all-night “Supernova” trance
music rave.</p>
<p>This event took place in open fields less than three miles from the Re’im military base.</p>
<p>Re’im was the headquarters of the Israeli army’s Gaza Division – the number one target of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive.</p>
<p>But the separation between Israeli settler “civilians” and Israeli combatants is not always clear cut.</p>
<p>Planted around the Gaza region mostly after the forced expulsion of
the Palestinians by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army between
1947 and 1949, the settlements besieging Gaza were conceived by Israeli
military doctrine as a belt of human shields to protect Israel’s
occupation and suppress the far bigger population of Gaza.</p>
<p>The population of the Gaza Strip is more than 80 percent refugees –
those expelled from their homes in order to make room for the new state
of Israel in 1948 and after, along with their descendants.</p>
<p>One of these so-called “Gaza Envelope” settlements, founded in 1951,
is even called “Magen” – literally the Hebrew for “shield.” Another,
Nahal Oz, was established as an explicitly military settlement.</p>
<p><a href="https://westernnegevtribute.kkl-jnf.org/?community=kibbutz-nahal-oz">According to the Jewish National Fund</a>,
a colonial arm of the Israeli state, Nahal Oz was intended to “supply
the IDF with soldiers.” It was also intended to “become a civilian
center and serve as the first line of defense against potential future
Arab invasions while providing a base of operations and resources for
military forces operating in peripheral regions.”</p>
<h2>UN laundering of Israeli propaganda</h2>
<p>In June this year, the United Nations Human Rights Council <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-attacks-7october2023-report-10jun24/">issued a report</a>: “Detailed findings on attacks carried out on and after 7 October 2023 in Israel.”</p>
<p>What little media attention it received tended to focus on how the
report (along with an accompanying document focusing on Gaza) had
concluded that “Israel and Hamas have both committed war crimes,” as <em>The Guardian</em> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/12/israel-hamas-gaza-un-ceasefire-plan">put it</a>.</p>
<p>The report’s authors described themselves as an “independent international commission of inquiry” into the offensive.</p>
<p>For the most part, the report does not disclose its sources. The
authors say that this is due to unspecified “protection concerns.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it is clear from the instances where the report does
disclose its sources that they relied almost entirely on Israeli claims.
Where it does cite Palestinian sources, they are for the most part
bodycam videos from killed or captured fighters. These were released by
the Israeli occupation authorities and are highly likely to have been
subjected to selective editing.</p>
<p>Therefore it is unsurprising to find that the document ends up, for
the most part, siding with the debunked Israeli narrative about
Palestinian atrocities. It does this to the point of absurdity at times.</p>
<p>In one instance, the commission of inquiry reverses the chronology of
events to give the impression that a Palestinian fighter deliberately
executed an Israeli baby at Kibbutz Be’eri, <em>after</em> they had broken into a room.
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<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/planned-bbc-smear-uk-palestinians-will-rely-israeli-spy-source">Yet, according to press reports</a>,
the death was actually the tragic result of a stray bullet. Milla
Cohen, a 10-month-old baby, died when a Palestinian fighter shot through
a door <em>before</em> he broke into a room in a settlement house to take captives.
<p>Even worse, the UN report appears to rely heavily on the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/zaka">discredited Jewish extremist group ZAKA</a> as a source, citing it once explicitly, and frequently citing it obliquely as unnamed “first responders.”</p>
<p>These “first responders” then tell lurid stories about supposed Palestinian “war crimes.”</p>
<p>And yet even the report admits that ZAKA is “not trained or equipped
to manage large, complex crime scenes and may have also tainted, <em>or even tampered with</em>, evidence” (emphasis added).</p>
<p>“One first responder working for ZAKA” – who the report does not name
– “provided inaccurate and exaggerated accounts of findings in media
interviews.”</p>
<p>This may have been a reference to senior ZAKA leader <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yossi-landau">Yossi Landau</a>.</p>
<p>Landau was <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-source-executed-children-lie-admits-story-was-untrue">forced by Al Jazeera journalists</a>
to admit on camera – for a documentary broadcast in March – that his
initial story about Palestinian fighters executing 10 Israeli children
by burning them alive was a fiction.</p>
<p>Confronted with his own lack of evidence, Landau admitted: “When you
look at them and they’re burned you don’t know exactly the ages. So
you’re talking about 18 years old, 20 years old … you just don’t look on
the spot … to see the ages or something like that.”</p>
<p>Landau was later forced to step back from his position in the group after internal disputes over money and power.</p>
<h2>Hannibal strikes confirmed by UN</h2>
<p>Despite the report’s authors apparently trying their best to launder
Israeli atrocity propaganda into the UN system, the document does
nevertheless contain an astonishing collection of evidence confirming <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/7-october-investigations">The Electronic Intifada’s reporting over the last year</a> that Israel itself killed many, if not most, of the Israelis that day.</p>
<p>Some of the evidence in the UN report is only oblique, and requires
cross referencing with Hebrew-language media reports about the Hannibal
doctrine and the unprecedented way it was used on 7 October 2023.</p>
<p>But some of it is explicit.</p>
<p>Over the course of three pages, the report details some of what is
known about “the application of the ‘Hannibal Directive’” that day.</p>
<p>The commission wrote that it “documented strong indications that the
‘Hannibal Directive’ was used in several instances on 7 October, harming
Israelis at the same time as striking Palestinian militants.”</p>
<p>In its section on the Hannibal Directive, the UN report even states
that “Israeli helicopters were present at the Nova site and may have
shot at targets on the ground, including civilian vehicles.” It states
that “one or two helicopters” were “present over the Nova festival site
in the mid-morning hours.”</p>
<p>This is something The Electronic Intifada <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-helicopter-shot-civilians-7-october-rave-police-find">first reported in November</a>.</p>
<p>The UN report cites the testimony of two unnamed witnesses to back
this up, including an Israeli army “reserve brigadier general, who
fought against militants near a parked tank close to the Nova site” and
explained that “he called the Gaza Battalion to request an attack
helicopter.”</p>
<p>The presence of attack helicopters – and of at least one tank – in
the battle for the Supernova rave site could also go some way towards
explaining the high number of noncombatant casualties among the fleeing
rave attendees that morning.</p>
<h2>The Supernova rave</h2>
<p>Held in a location less than four miles away from the massive
open-air prison camp that is the Gaza Strip, Supernova was put on by an
event management company calling itself the “Tribe of Nova.”</p>
<p>Its defenders have condemned the Palestinian fighters for attacking a
“peace festival,” while the event’s critics have decried it as akin to
German civilians dancing outside the gates of Auschwitz during the Nazi
Holocaust.</p>
<p>Often referred to as the “Nova music festival” by Western media, the event on its <a href="https://www.eventer.co.il/event/novaparalellotranslate/wCqCL">official webpage</a>
actually named itself the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering.” A recent film
about the event showed that it was more akin to the illegal raves often
organized in secret locations in many Western countries.</p>
<p>Supernova was not illegal and was coordinated with the local Israeli
police force (which was armed and present in advance to guard the
event). But for reasons that are not entirely clear, the rave’s location
was not announced until 6 October.</p>
<p>Participants in the high profile Israeli film <em>We Will Dance Again</em> confirmed that the Supernova location was kept secret from ticket holders until the last minute.</p>
<p>This (rather than any confusion about the days of the event or
extension of the time, as is sometimes erroneously said online) explains
why Hamas had no clue about the presence of the rave in the fields
between Gaza and the biggest military base in the area – the regional
headquarters at Re’im.</p>
<h2>The Supernova deaths</h2>
<p>The rave is often reported to be the largest single site of deaths
that took place on 7 October. The UN report said that 364 out of the
3,000 total ravers were “killed either at the site, near Kibbutz Re’im
or in adjacent locations.”</p>
<p>But a detailed breakdown of the deaths <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report-details-idfs-silence-on-security-fears-failure-to-react-to-nova-massacre/">recently published</a> by <em>The Times of Israel</em> (based on an Israeli TV channel’s investigation) shows that more than 60 percent of this figure actually died <em>outside</em> of the designated grounds of the rave.</p>
<p>This is important for two reasons.</p>
<p>Firstly, despite the fact that the film <em>We Will Dance Again</em>
tries to paint a picture of villainous Palestinian terrorists
deliberately attacking civilians, it is clear from all available
evidence that the rave was not a planned target of the Hamas offensive
that day.</p>
<p>Indeed, the secret location of the event meant that a few Palestinian
fighters – perhaps some from armed factions and probably some armed
civilians – stumbled on the event in the course of their assault on the
military bases.</p>
<p>Armed clashes with the Israeli forces – including police, soldiers
and at least one tank, as well as armed Israeli “civilians” present –
swiftly ensued.</p>
<p>Israeli <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">intelligence has concluded</a> that the Palestinians had no prior knowledge of the rave.
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Secondly, the breakdown published by <em>The Times of Israel</em> places
the deaths of ravers outside the rave grounds as far away as Sderot (11
miles north of the Supernova site) and the Re’im military base (only
2.3 miles south)
<p>Plotting these sites of death onto Google Earth and cross referencing
them with the sites of ambushes set up by Hamas’ elite commando force –
as detailed by the <em>7 Days</em> investigation – shows the two often coincide.</p>
<p>It is therefore likely that the deaths of some of these fleeing
ravers were the unintended consequences of Palestinian ambushes set up
to intercept Israeli army reinforcements headed to the region.</p>
<p>“While many reinforcements were flowing south,” Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun wrote in the <em>7 Days</em>
investigation, Hamas’ commando force “had foreseen these reinforcements
and took over the strategic junctions … where they awaited the forces …
a lot of blood was shed at those junctions, both of soldiers and of
civilians.”</p>
<p>The <em>7 Days</em> piece also relates instances of Israeli soldiers
rushing south to join the fight on their own initiative – including in
their own civilian vehicles.</p>
<p>“Commanders who had already learned from the media or from friends
that something was going on … scrambled to get to the Gaza Envelope,”
Bergman and Zitun explained.</p>
<p>One brigade commander told the journalists that, “I came with my
private vehicle to the Yad Mordechai junction [2.3 miles north of the
Erez checkpoint] after I saw [the attack] on the news at home.”</p>
<h2>Exploding houses in the settlements</h2>
<p>Evidence of deliberate Israeli “mass Hannibal” killings of Israeli
civilians at the kibbutzim and other settlements surrounding Gaza <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/evidence-israel-killed-its-own-citizens-7-october/41156">is clear and undeniable</a>.</p>
<p>Video footage and press reports of the Al-Aqsa Flood offensive show
that many buildings in the settlements were completely destroyed, in a
manner consistent with heavy weaponry <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-killed-israelis-confirms-new-7-october-documentary">only known by military experts to be in the possession of the Israeli military</a>, and not in the possession of Palestinian fighters.</p>
<p>While some buildings and cars did show signs of being burned, many others were <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-killed-israelis-confirms-new-7-october-documentary">clearly bombed from the air</a> by Israeli drones and attack helicopters or shelled by Israeli tanks.
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Nof Erez, the Israeli Air Force colonel who admitted that 7 October was a “mass Hannibal” event, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/we-blew-israeli-houses-7-october-says-israeli-colonel">answered positively</a> when asked by the interviewer if they “exploded all kinds of houses inside the settlements.”
<p>Erez insisted that his pilots only did so with “permission” from
their superior officers. “I saw numerous drones above every settlement
on a computer image, which we can see in every IDF [Israeli military]
command,” he explained.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-general-killed-israelis-7-october-then-lied-about-it/43176">Footage on Israeli TV</a> has shown Israeli tanks present and firing in the settlement of Kibbutz Be’eri.</p>
<p>Most infamously, Brigadier General Barak Hiram admitted to ordering
his tanks to fire at Pessi Cohen’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri – “even at
the cost of the civilians,” <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-general-killed-israelis-7-october-then-lied-about-it/43176">as he told</a> <em>The New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>Palestinian fighters from Hamas had taken 15 people captive and held
them at the home, while they attempted to negotiate their exit to Gaza.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-army-probe-covered-friendly-fire-killings-7-october/48046">Investigations by The Electronic Intifada have concluded</a> that <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israeli-colonel-invented-burned-babies-lie-justify-genocide/47011">most of the dead</a> were highly likely to have been killed by Hiram’s assault.</p>
<p>The Electronic Intifada was the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861">first to publish in English the eyewitness account</a> of survivor <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yasmin-porat">Yasmin Porat</a> who said that the Israeli troops arrived at the scene and “eliminated everyone” with heavy gunfire and tank shelling.
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Porat, Palestinian commander Hasan Hamduna (who surrendered) and one
other captive – Hadas Dagan – were the only three survivors of Barak
Hiram’s massacre.
<p>Dagan insisted in testimony to Porat – which The Electronic Intifada <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-child-burned-completely-israeli-tank-fire-kibbutz/41706">first reported in November last year</a> – that everyone else in and around the building was either shot or “burned completely” by the Israeli tank fire.</p>
<p>The victims of this apocalypse included 12-year-old Israeli twins, Liel and Yanai Hatsroni.</p>
<p>Sickeningly, Liel’s photo was later used in official Israeli
propaganda which falsely claimed that Hamas had massacred and burned the
girl to death.</p>
<p>“Murdered in her home by Hamas monsters … just because she’s Jewish,” former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett <a href="https://x.com/naftalibennett/status/1724419046123164135">lied</a>.
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<h2>Hannibal at Supernova?</h2>
<p>What is still unclear about the Supernova rave is how many of the
dead were killed by Palestinians, and whether any were killed in
“Hannibal” attacks by Israel.</p>
<p>Unlike in the more built-up areas such as the military bases and the
kibbutzim – where there is clear visual evidence of bombed buildings and
conclusive eyewitness accounts – the visual situation in and around the
Supernova site was more chaotic.</p>
<p>There were few built-up structures for Israeli aircraft or tanks to explode, as they did in the settlements.</p>
<p><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/how-israeli-forces-trapped-and-killed-ravers-at-the-nova-festival">Video and other photographic evidence</a>
does show that the fields around the exit of the site next to the armed
Israeli checkpoint were intensively burned and blackened.</p>
<p>It is unclear whether this was the result of the helicopter or tank
attacks, or the result of fires which may have caught alight after
Palestinian rocket-propelled grenade strikes.</p>
<p>What <em>is</em> known is that Israeli armed forces on site set up a
roadblock at the main exit, causing a massive backlog of cars waiting to
leave the site. Many ravers ended up fleeing on foot, east across the
fields as the firefight broke out.</p>
<p>While the <em>We Will Dance Again</em> film conspicuously fails to mention the roadblock set up by Israeli forces, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2023/10/middleeast/hamas-music-festival-attack-investigation-cmd-intl/">an early CNN report</a> does show the roadblock on its map of the scene, and <em>The Times of Israel</em> <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report-details-idfs-silence-on-security-fears-failure-to-react-to-nova-massacre/">report</a> states that it was probably set up as early as 7:00 am.</p>
<p>Journalist William Van Wagenen has <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/how-israeli-forces-trapped-and-killed-ravers-at-the-nova-festival">detailed in a report</a> for <em>The Cradle</em>
that the roadblock likely led to Israeli forces unintentionally
trapping some escaping ravers in a firefight between them and
Palestinian fighters advancing on the Re’im military base from the
north.</p>
<h2>Psychoactive drugs</h2>
<p>One thing that is clear from both <em>We Will Dance Again</em> and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-30/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/what-its-like-to-experience-a-mass-terror-attack-while-on-mind-altering-drugs/0000018e-8d49-d782-a7bf-df7f33cf0000">a <em>Haaretz</em> interview</a> with an Israeli psychologist who has treated survivors is that the use of psychoactive drugs at the rave was widespread.</p>
<p>As participants arrived at the site on the night of 6 October,
“everyone’s saying that they’re going to get so high,” one participant
in the film recalled.</p>
<p>According to the <em>Haaretz</em> interview and to the film, ravers
used ecstasy, acid, cocaine, magic mushrooms and possibly ketamine.
Worse, many of the ravers had deliberately timed their dosages to kick
in at sunrise – which turned out to be <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/israel/tel-aviv?month=10&year=2023">just before</a> the Palestinian offensive began – with rocket salvos from Gaza starting at 6:26 am.</p>
<p>“This sucks so much! Everyone is high,” one participant in the film
recalled feeling as the rockets soared overhead. Acid, another
explained, “can make things seem much worse.”</p>
<p>Psychedelic drugs, the Israeli psychologist explained, can lead to a
situation in which “parts of the unconscious also rise to
consciousness.”</p>
<p>All of this makes it unlikely that many ravers were in a fit state to
discern whether they were being shot at by Israelis, Palestinians or
both as they ran for their lives.</p>
<p>Although the existence of the Hannibal Directive is an open secret
inside Israel, its use on Israeli civilian targets was – as far as we
know – unprecedented before 7 October 2023.</p>
<h2>Hannibal attacks all over the south</h2>
<p>About 105 residents were killed at Kibbutz Be’eri.</p>
<p>It is currently unknown how many of those were killed by Palestinians
and how many by Israelis. The UN report states that “at least 57
structures in the kibbutz were destroyed or sustained damage, amounting
to more than one third of all residential buildings.”</p>
<p>Many of these <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-killed-israelis-confirms-new-7-october-documentary">appear from the visual evidence</a> to have been destroyed by Israel.</p>
<p>But one important fact to bear in mind is that Israel’s “Hannibal”
massacre of Israelis at Be’eri was repeated all over the region.</p>
<p>We only know so much about the Pessi Cohen house massacre because two civilians survived to tell their story.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/released-captive-tells-how-israeli-fire-killed-kibbutz-resident/45121">Similar incidents happened</a> elsewhere. But in most places, there were few survivors, especially of the aerial bombardments.</p>
<p>An all-female tank unit commandeered a military vehicle it was
untrained to use and stormed through the gates of Holit, an Israeli
settlement near the boundary with Egypt and the frontier with Gaza, more
than 14 miles south of the Supernova rave.</p>
<p>“We break into the community, crash the gate,” one of the soldiers
told Israeli Channel 12. “The soldier points and tells me, ‘Shoot there,
the terrorists are there.’ I ask him, ‘Are there civilians there?’ He
says, ‘I don’t know, just shoot.’”</p>
<p>The tank commander then claims she decided not to shoot – but
immediately contradicts herself: “I fire with my machine gun at a
house.”
</p>
Similar to the visual evidence of Hannibal attacks on Israelis by Israel at Kibbutz Be’eri, an <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/evidence-israel-killed-its-own-citizens-7-october/41156">investigation by The Electronic Intifada last year</a> also concluded that the same sort of house explosions took place at Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
<p>The UN report lists a surprisingly high number of places where Hannibal attacks possibly or certainly took place.</p>
<p>Outside the Israeli settlement of Nirim (which lies on the path
between the Palestinian city of Khan Younis and the Gaza Division’s
Re’im military headquarters) one Israeli tank crew departed to Nir Oz,
another nearby settlement.</p>
<p>Once there, the UN report states, “they noticed hundreds of people crossing into Israel and back to Gaza and they shot at them, <em>including at vehicles laden with people</em>, some of whom <em>may have been hostages</em>” (emphasis added).</p>
<p>The next paragraph of the report hints at the possibility of similar incidents at Nitzana, Kissufim and Holit.</p>
<h2>How many were killed by Israel?</h2>
<p>Despite initially claiming that 1,400 people were “murdered by Hamas”
on 7 October last year, Israel soon began revising the figure
downwards.</p>
<p>In November, the Israeli government <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-admits-burning-hundreds-people-7-october">announced that 200 out of this figure</a> were in fact Hamas fighters. They had been so badly burned by Israeli bombings they were completely unidentifiable.</p>
<p>This demonstrates how indiscriminate much of Israel’s fire was that day.</p>
<p>The Israeli death count now stands at 1,154, according to Al Jazeera.</p>
<p>Of these, at least 314 are said in the UN report to have been “Israeli military personnel.”</p>
<p>In March, a comprehensive <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-killed-israelis-confirms-new-7-october-documentary">survey of three Israeli death tolls in Hebrew by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit</a> put the number of armed combatants higher, totaling 372.</p>
<p>As well as soldiers, the Al Jazeera figure includes police, security
guards (i.e. armed settlement militias) and “security personnel.”</p>
<p>The <em>7 Days</em> investigation concluded that officers from the
Shin Bet – the undercover Israeli “internal security” agency – were also
sent to join the battle in the south: “In the course of the fighting,
10 of the organization’s people were killed.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-explains/2023-10-19/ty-article-magazine/israels-dead-the-names-of-those-killed-in-hamas-massacres-and-the-israel-hamas-war/0000018b-325c-d450-a3af-7b5cf0210000">The English edition of the <em>Haaretz</em> database</a> of the dead revealed the names of three of these people – Yossi Tahar, Smadar Mor Idan and Omer Gvera.</p>
<p>None of the three are listed in the database as combatants. It is
therefore likely that the other seven dead Shin Bet combatants are also
secretly listed as “civilians” on the database.</p>
<p>Al Jazeera’s raw data – provided by the investigative unit to The
Electronic Intifada for this article – reveals that its figures of
“security personnel” does indeed name eight Shin Bet officers among the
dead.</p>
<p>The 372 declared combatants plus the two undeclared Shin Bet officers
gives us 374 dead combatants – almost a third of the total dead
Israelis.</p>
<p>Taking those away from the 1,154 total dead leaves us with a maximum of 780 dead Israeli civilians.</p>
<p>This means that at least 41 percent of the initial (erroneous) figure
of 1,400 dead were actually combatants – mostly Israelis, but including
200 of the dead Palestinian fighters.</p>
<h2>“Everyone in the vehicle was killed”</h2>
<p>If a maximum of 780 unarmed Israelis died during the Al-Aqsa Flood
offensive, how many of these were killed by Israel and how many by
Palestinians?</p>
<p>The current answer to this question is that it is impossible to know without a truly independent international investigation.</p>
<p>And, as the UN report makes clear, Israel is blocking just such an
investigation. “The commission considers that Israel is obstructing its
investigations into events on and since 7 October 2023, both in Israel
and in the occupied Palestinian territory.”</p>
<p>But it is possible for us to reach some tentative conclusions.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-killed-israelis-confirms-new-7-october-documentary">Al Jazeera’s investigative film</a>
found that “at least 18” of the noncombatant dead were definitely
killed by Israeli ground troops and that at least 27 of the Israelis in
Palestinian captivity “died somewhere between their home and the Gaza
fence in circumstances that have not been explained.”</p>
<p>But Al Jazeera’s raw data shows that these are very well-attested and
deliberate Hannibal killings, such as the infamous Pessi Cohen house
massacre carried out by Barak Hiram.</p>
<p>This doesn’t take account of several other key figures, from which we
can extrapolate a possible rough idea of the order of magnitude of the
overall Hannibal and unintentional “friendly fire” deaths.</p>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-10/corpes-collage.jpg?itok=9glD7Qdr×tamp=1728254626" width="394" height="236" alt="Collage shows stills from a graphic video showing two corpses in a destroyed car" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
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<p>A <a href="https://x.com/IsraelMFA/status/1712330627607924776">video released</a>
by Israel in October last year unintentionally gave away some very
strong evidence that the Hannibal Directive was used on Israeli captives
on the road to Gaza.</p><small>
<span>Israel MFA</span></small>
<p>The <em>7 Days</em> investigation states that Israeli military
investigators “examined some 70 vehicles that … did not reach Gaza
because on their way they had been hit by fire from a helicopter
gunship, a UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] or a tank, and at least in some
of the cases, <em>everyone in the vehicle was killed</em>” (emphasis added).</p>
<p>It is unknown how many Israelis those 70 vehicles contained, but
given what is known about other incidents, some cars probably contained
several. These vehicles alone may have accounted for a very large number
of Israeli civilian deaths.</p>
<p>Palestinian captors often packed multiple Israeli prisoners into
pickup trucks, expropriated cars and even in some cases trailers dragged
by tractors.</p>
<p>Fleeing Israelis did likewise.</p>
<p>One raver in the <em>We Will Dance Again</em> film describes desperately packing into cars to escape the Supernova site.</p>
<p>There were “a million people inside” the car, he recalled. “Half my
body is outside,” he added, explaining that he was hanging out of the
window.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed0-OxNO_bQ&rco=1">Israeli combat helicopter footage released online</a>
and compiled in the Al Jazeera film shows one video of about a dozen
people fleeing a packed car as they are fired on by the Israelis. Their
fates are unknown.</p>
<p>The film shows many similar videos. It’s unclear where exactly near
Gaza these incidents took place. You can watch the full film <a href="https://www.ajiunit.com/investigation/october-7/">on Al Jazeera’s website</a> or in the YouTube video embedded below (due to the platform’s age restrictions, you will need an appropriate YouTube account).
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<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/shoot-everything-how-israeli-pilots-killed-their-own-civilians">A November news report</a>
on the Israeli website *Ynet* quoted a helicopter pilot as saying that
“in the first four hours from the start of the battles” alone, Israeli
aircraft “attacked about 300 targets, most in Israeli territory.”
<p>The report stated that they were commanded to “shoot at everything” near the fence with Gaza.</p>
<p>The reporter of the Hebrew piece was Yoav Zitun, the co-author of the <em>7 Days</em> investigation, a well-sourced Israeli military reporter close to the intelligence and military establishment.</p>
<p>The drone operators seem to have been even more deadly than the helicopter pilots. The <em>7 Days</em>
piece says they often “took decisions to attack” by themselves and that
by the end of the day on 7 October, “the squadron performed no fewer
than 110 attacks on some 1,000 targets, most of which were inside
Israel.”</p>
<p>If “targets” includes individual persons, it’s hard to know how many
would have been Israelis. The pilots probably often did not know
themselves. If a hit “target” also includes individual cars, the 1,000
targets hit could have easily resulted in hundreds of dead people.</p>
<h2>The car “cemetery”</h2>
<p>In November hundreds of the vehicles blown up during the Palestinian
offensive were collected by Israeli troops and piled up in a scrapyard
near the settlements of Tekuma and Netivot.
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<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october">Photos</a> and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-admits-immense-amount-friendly-fire-7-october">drone footage</a>
of the scrapyard clearly showed many of the cars were completely
flattened and twisted in a manner consistent with Israeli bombing from
the air.
<p>In short, the cars looked very similar to the Palestinian cars (of
both civilians and fighters) habitually bombed by Israel from the air in
Gaza over the years.</p>
<p>Today, it seems the scrapyard has become something of a tourist
attraction for Israel and its supporters – a site they refer to as a
“car burial ground.” In one video shot there this past summer, an
Israeli army <a href="https://youtu.be/vwUAPBAbRdI?si=CEU2i2ynNEpYKT_K&t=117">tour guide says</a> that the scrapyard contains “1,650 vehicles that were brought here.”</p>
<p>In one ambulance alone, he says, from the ash and “human dust” they recovered, the remains of 18 people were found.</p>
<p>Whatever the true figure of the Israelis dead from “Hannibal” attacks
by Israel, it does seem entirely plausible that Israel killed hundreds
of the Israelis who died during the course of the offensive.</p>
<h2>The whitewash</h2>
<p>For the last year, there has been a systematic cover-up by Israel.</p>
<p>Most of the Israeli reporting on this has been in Hebrew only. And not due to lack of access to English language media.</p>
<p>The lead author of the <em>7 Days</em> investigation was Ronen Bergman – who is also a high profile <em>New York Times</em> reporter and bestselling author of several hagiographies of the Mossad and other Israeli spy agencies.</p>
<p>Bergman has yet to write about the Hannibal Directive in English in <em>The New York Times</em> or elsewhere.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-army-probe-covered-friendly-fire-killings-7-october/48046">Very few autopsies were carried out</a> – not on the dead at Pessi Cohen’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri at any rate.</p>
<p>In the case of that particular crime, it would have likely been
impossible anyway. Barak Hiram’s tank shelling meant most of his Israeli
victims were burned to cinders – including 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni.
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Many bodies were <a href="https://x.com/PHRIsrael/status/1719019024816676928">prematurely buried</a>. Israeli cars destroyed in apparent “Hannibal” killings were <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-774511">crushed by Israeli authorities</a> before being buried in the “cemetery” on a religious pretext.
<p>The UN commission’s report criticizes Israel for barring them access
to the country. “Israeli officials not only refused to cooperate with
the commission’s investigation but also reportedly barred medical
professionals and others from being in contact,” the report states.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-army-probe-covered-friendly-fire-killings-7-october/48046">In a whitewash “investigation”</a> of the killings at Pessi Cohen’s house, the army in July largely cleared Barak Hiram of any wrongdoing.</p>
<p>The remains of the house have <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-816853">now been demolished by the army</a>.</p>
<p>Last month, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/brig-gen-barak-hiram-takes-charge-of-idfs-gaza-division/">Hiram was promoted</a> – appointed head of the humbled Gaza Division.</p>
<p>His predecessor, Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/i-failed-in-my-lifes-mission-gaza-division-head-announces-resignation-over-oct-7/">had quit</a> over his failure to prevent the 7 October 2023 offensive.</p>
<p>Comparing the assault with Egypt’s surprise October 1973 offensive to
regain territories occupied by Israel, one high-level source who was in
the “Pit” military headquarters deep under Tel Aviv that day, recalled
to Bergman and Zitun the following words that were intoned.</p>
<p>“It is unimaginable. It’s like the Old City of Jerusalem in the War
of Independence or the outposts along the Suez Canal during the Yom
Kippur War. We thought that this could never happen again.”</p>
<p>“This will remain a scar burnt into our flesh forever.”</p>
<p><em>With additional research by Maureen Murphy and translation from Hebrew by Dena Shunra.</em></p>
<p><em>Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and associate editor with The Electronic Intifada. He is author of the book</em> <a href="https://orbooks.com/catalog/weaponising-anti-semitism/">Weaponising Anti-Semitism</a>: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn <em>(OR Books, 2023).</em></p><br>
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