Israel’s narrative about atrocities it claims took place at the hands of Hamas fighters during Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023 has been falling apart, as evidence about the events continue to emerge. Assertions of the barbarity of Hamas’ actions have been shown to be without foundation. The claim made by the Zionists and repeated by US President Joe Biden that Hamas had beheaded 40 Israeli babies was eventually retracted by both the Israeli government and the White House, who acknowledged that no evidence existed of such an atrocity. Other claims, for instance that Hamas fighters burned babies in an oven, or bound children together before burning them, or cut open the stomach of a pregnant women, were debunked as baseless in a Haaretz report on 4 December.
The claims of systematic sexual violence by Hamas fighters against Israeli women, parroted uncritically by much of the corporate media, have similarly been presented with little to no credible suppporting evidence. Such was the case with the story of Galad Abdush, an Israeli woman killed on 7 October who was featured prominently in a New York Times (NYT) article which said she was raped by Hamas fighters. After its publication, Abdush’s family members, who had been quoted in the article, spoke out on social media denying that there was any evidence that she had been raped. Zionist police confirmed that they have not located any eyewitnesses of rape on 7 October, and that some testimonies contained in the article were without evidence.
Western reports about such alleged sexual violence, including the NYT article, have heavily relied on testimony from questionable organisations with ties to the Zionist government, including the ZAKA organisation, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish organisation recruited by the Israeli government to help with its propaganda efforts. Director of the Government Press Office Nitzan Hein described ZAKA’s activities as ‘extremely important in hasbara [propaganda]’ while Netanyahu said: ‘We need to buy time, which we also buy by turning to world leaders and to public opinion. You have an important role in influencing public opinion… [ZAKA testimonies] give us the manoeuvring room.’
Meanwhile, there is evidence that many of the civilian casualties of 7 October were caused by Zionist fire, rather than by Palestinian resistance forces. While Western media outlets have not given much attention to these stories, they have been reported extensively in Israeli media. On 15 November, Yasmin Porat, who had been captured by Hamas on the day and kept captive in a house in Kibbutz Be’eri, told Kan Radio how the army shelled homes where Israeli hostages had been held, and blowing up houses with tank fire. Porat, who described the Palestinian fighters as having treated them humanely, confirmed that many of the Israeli hostages were killed by Israeli fire, including a 12-year-old girl whose body was burned so badly by tank fire that it took more than six weeks to identify her. In mid-December, Israel’s Channel 12 released video of Zionist tanks firing on civilian homes in Be’eri, confirming Porat’s account. Israeli tanks also shelled Sderot police station knowing that they were killing Israeli captives inside.
Other reports have revealed that Israeli air force pilots responding to the 7 October operation were ordered to ‘shoot at everything’ near the perimeter with Gaza, launching hundreds of attacks at thousands of targets. In November, an Israeli investigation concluded that the Supernova music festival in Kibbutz Re’im, where a claimed 364 people were killed, had come under fire from an Israeli helicopter gunship and that festival participants were hit. In another example revealed by Ynetnews on 12 January, approximately 70 vehicles being driven by Palestinian fighters, many containing Israeli captives, were blown up by Israeli army helicopters, drones, and tanks.
In November, Israeli Colonel Nof Erez told a Haaretz podcast that Israel’s actions on 7 October were ‘a mass Hannibal’, a reference to the Zionists’ Hannibal Directive, which authorises soldiers to kill Israelis to prevent them being taken captive by Palestinian fighters. On 12 December, Ynetnews quoted the army as admitting that an ‘immense and complex quantity’ of ‘friendly fire’ incidents took place on 7 October.
On 21 January, Hamas released a document entitled ‘Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’, outlining its version of the events of 7 October. It states that its fighters were under orders not to harm civilians, ‘especially children, women and elderly people’, which it describes as ‘a religious and moral commitment’ for all Hamas fighters. The document also explicitly rejected the claims that Hamas fighters had beheaded babies or raped women, and affirmed that Hamas fighters primarily targeted enemy soldiers, who it aimed to capture in order to exchange them for the release of the thousands of Palestinians held in Zionist prisons. The document goes on to call for a ‘transparent international investigation’, urging the International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli genocide in Gaza and human rights violations across the Palestinian territories.
Despite the cracks in the Zionist narrative, the corporate media has consistently parroted its most graphic and extreme claims about the actions of the Palestinian fighters on 7 October. By reiterating unsubstantiated claims about beheaded babies, mass rape and the like, Israel and its allies seek to portray Palestinians as violent, barbaric savages who cannot be reasoned with and who Israel has no choice but to destroy with extreme violence. Dehumanising Palestinians in this way is the only means Zionism has of justifying the immense bloodshed it is inflicting in Gaza. The fact that so much of the corporate media has made itself complicit in this genocidal propaganda campaign is a crime that those media outlets should never be allowed to forget.
Wesam Khaled
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 298 February/March 2024
