Israel Lies About October 7th
Updated 2024-04-03
2024-02-26 Examining Israeli Allegations of Atrocities by Resistance in Operation al-Aqsa Flood Israel’s objective extends beyond seeking justice, as it claims, rather, it aims to solidify its aggressive settler colonialism in Palestine, prioritizing the Judaization of the land and its inhabitants over the plight of Palestinians.
Israeli allegations against Palestinian resistance forces and GS residents involved in Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7/10/2023, were diverse. These claims, orchestrated by organized entities within Israel’s government, aimed to justify its assault on GS and globally vilify Palestinian resistance, despite lacking validity.
Despite most of the claims against Palestinians being refuted, Israel launched an international campaign in mid-November 2023 to compile files against Palestinians involved in the events of 7/10/2023, in anticipation of criminal prosecution. Israel disseminated false and fabricated information through sympathetic journalists, accounts and websites to garner global public opinion support for its GS war. This article will address some of these allegations and present evidence to debunk them. https://www.globalresearch.ca/examining-israeli-allegations-atrocities-resistance-operation-al-aqsa-flood/5850689
He was speaking on the grand stage of the U.N. General Assembly, but no world leaders bothered to attend. Outside, some 2,000 people, a mixture of American Jews and Israeli citizens, protested his attacks on the independence of the Israeli judiciary system. The scene served as a reminder of how deeply unpopular his far-right governing coalition, not to mention Netanyahu himself, had become in Israel. At that moment, it seemed that Netanyahu was pushed against the ropes, in a losing battle to continue his political reign.
Just days later, as Hamas commandos penetrated the barriers encircling Gaza and embarked on their deadly raids targeting several military installations as well as kibbutzim, everything changed in an instant. Just as the Bush administration exploited the 9/11 attacks to justify a sweeping war in which it declared the world a battlefield, Netanyahu is using the horrors of October 7 to wage the crusade he’s been preparing for his entire political career. With his grip on power fading last fall, the October 7 attacks provided him with just the opportunity he needed, and he hitched his political survival to the war on Gaza and what could be his last chance to eliminate Israel’s Palestinian problem once and for all. https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/
2024-02-05 Senate Deal Would Block All Funding to UNRWA as Gazans Starve Just after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said in an interim ruling late last month that South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza is “plausible,” Israel announced it had discovered that 12 of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Palestine had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7.
As the United Nations warned Monday that at least a quarter of civilians in Gaza are suffering from “catastrophic” food insecurity and the collapse of the healthcare system is causing disease to spread, the U.S. Senate doubled down on cutting funding for the U.N.’s top humanitarian agency serving Palestinians by including in a bipartisan package a provision that would block aid for the body. The proposed $118 billion Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, chiefly negotiated by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and James Lankford (R-Okla.) includes $14.1 billion for Israel, which has killed at least 27,468 Palestinians in Gaza and at least 360 in the West Bank since beginning its assault on the occupied territories in October.
But a provision notes that none of the $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for Palestinians and Ukrainians “may be made available for a contribution, grant, or other payment” to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). https://www.commondreams.org/news/senate-deal-unrwa
2024-02-04 ZAKA’s World – How an Israeli Organization Used October 7 to Tell Lies and Make Money Composed mainly of volunteers, ZAKA is a non-governmental ultra-Orthodox organization “with sole responsibility in Israel for dealing with incidents of unnatural death,” according to its website. Its task is to collect bodies and body parts, including blood, so that it can be buried in accordance with Jewish religious law. An investigation by the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, however, has raised several questions about procedures during the retrieval of the bodies.
The paper says “it is based on the accounts of military personnel present at the body retrievals and the Shura military base (which was made a body identification center), as well as volunteers from ZAKA and other rescue organizations who worked in the broader communities.” It raised concerns that “in the first and critical days after October 7”, the Israeli military decided to forgo the deployment of hundreds of soldiers specifically trained in the identification and collection of human remains in mass casualty incidents. “Instead, the Home Front Command chose to use ZAKA, a private organization, alongside soldiers in the Military Rabbinate’s search unit” for the south, the paper said.
In the meantime, Haaretz says ZAKA volunteers worked at the sites from morning to night. However, “as part of the effort to get media exposure, ZAKA spread accounts of atrocities that never happened, released sensitive and graphic photos, and acted unprofessionally on the ground,” the report states.
In what the Haaretz article subtitles ‘Tales of Imagination’, it reports that a ZAKA volunteer “tearfully” recounted on social media that “We saw a woman, around 30 years old, (and) she was lying on the floor in a large puddle of blood, facing the ground.” The volunteer continued, “We turned her over in order to place her into the bag.” “She was pregnant …Her stomach was swollen, and the baby was still attached by the umbilical cord when it was stabbed, and she was shot in the back of the head. I don’t know if she suffered and saw her baby murdered or not.” The incident, which the volunteer alleged occurred in Be’eri, “simply didn’t happen, and was one of several stories that have been circulated without any basis.” “There is no evidence for this incident, and no one in the kibbutz has heard of this woman. A ZAKA senior official admitted in a conversation with Haaretz that the organization knows the incident didn’t occur,” the Haaretz report states.
The article goes on to say that in another video, the same volunteer weepingly describes “how he found the burnt and mutilated bodies of 20 children in one of the kibbutzim.” He told Haaretz that this was behind the dining hall in Kfar Azza, while in another instance, he said it was in Be’eri. However, reports Haaretz, two adolescents, aged 14 and 16, were killed in Kfar Azza. Ten children were killed in Be’eri, but at least some were known to have been with a parent and were killed in their homes, the report adds. Haaretz reports that the organization “has been accused of spreading false information before.”
In December 2022, Haaretz reported that ZAKA had inflated its stated number of volunteers for years in order to receive more funding. Haaretz reports that before October 7, the organization faced insolvency. “In the time since, says a source at ZAKA, they have raised over 50 million shekels ($13.7 million),” the report adds.
“Not only do these men lack the professional qualifications to make such assessments (they are not medical experts), but their testimonies also lack details: no age, no location, and no time,” Mondoweiss stressed. The report continues that “Details and/or evidence have not even been given to journalists who have asked to see them while reporting on these testimonies. This means that it is impossible to either confirm or debunk them.”
On November 23, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly met with the organization’s teams. He is reported as having said “You have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders. We are in a war; it will continue. The war is not only to take care of the 1,400 people…but also to give us the maneuvering room.”
ZAKA was founded in the late 1990s by Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who was previously the leader of Keshet, an ultra-Orthodox group. The group “fought against autopsies and archaeological digs in gravesites,” according to a YNet news article. Meshi-Zahav ran ZAKA until 2021, when he attempted suicide after numerous allegations of rape and sexual assault against him, including of minors. He died in 2022. https://fgww.palestinechronicle.com/zakas-world-how-an-israeli-organization-used-october-7-to-tell-lies-and-make-money/
2024-03-26 Reporter Exposes Israeli Lies About Oct 7th Attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L91kG_bYsn0
2024-01-05 The New York Times “weaponized” Hamas rape story is a fraud. Ali Abunimah debunks it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VvGF9vYnlw
2024-01-04 MASS RAPE By Hamas on Oct 7th? NYT Coverage QUESTIONED By Max Blumenthal: Rising DEBATES Editor at The Grayzone Max Blumenthal weighs in on recent updates surrounding October 7th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN9Rh3XOeo8
2023-12-04 Watch: Debunking Israel’s “mass rape” propaganda Israel and its proxies have launched a new media blitz, reviving unverified claims that Hamas fighters perpetrated mass rapes of Israeli women during its 7 October military operation. Despite blanket coverage, Israel does not claim to have identified any specific victim of such crimes, nor produced any videos or forensic evidence corroborating that they took place. On The Electronic Intifada livestream we dissected this propaganda campaign and showed how it is being fronted by operatives close to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-debunking-israels-mass-rape-propaganda
2023-11-24 Israeli spokesperson vs Tom Swarbrick caller over ‘IDF propaganda’ | LBC Israeli spokesperson joined Tom Swarbrick to answer callers over the Israel-Hamas war, and the consequential humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Caller Shahadah challenges Eylon Levy over the claims that ‘babies were beheaded’ by Hamas after Israeli-newspaper Haaretz released reports contesting the allegations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoo1z5TGAxQ
2023-11-22 Israeli admits its helicopters killed Israelis on 10/7 The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss new Israeli police revelations vindicating their reporting about the events of October 7, and undermining those who branded them “conspiracy theorists.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Ja8zHUjlw
2023-11-21 US OK’s Bombing Children as Hamas Fights for Their Freedom from Illegal Israeli Military Occupation Israel maintains an illegal air, sea and land blockade on Gaza, not allowing anyone, including children, to escape being bombed to death. The US government, providing Israel with warplanes, missiles, weapons, ammunition and political and diplomatic backing, is complicit in this ongoing genocide of bombing to death thousands of militarily confined civilians, mostly women and children . The Israeli government claims the right to bomb its illegally occupied and captive Palestinians and kill all the members of their Hamas government.
As to Israel’s using the Israelis killed in the Hamas Oct 7th attack to justify the Israeli response of murdering already 12, 500 Palestinian civilians, resent investigations find that a large fraction of the bodies recovered had been charred beyond all recognition, making it very difficult to distinguish between Israelis and Hamas attackers. Since the Hamas fighters had only been carrying rifles and other small arms, all those victims must have been killed by explosive tank shells and Hellfire missiles. Indeed, newly released video footage revealed that hundreds of Israeli cars had been incinerated by such munitions, suggesting that many or most of the Israelis killed fleeing the dance festival had probably died at the hands of trigger-happy Apache pilots, who reported that they had blasted anything that moved. https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/us-oks-bombing-children-as-hamas-fights-for-their-freedom-from-illegal-israeli-military-occupation/
2023-11-18 IDEO: What really happened on October 7? The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal joins Chris Hedges to discuss his investigation into Israel’s indiscriminate use of heavy weapons against Israeli citizens on October 7, and the shock-and-awe campaign of misinformation it subsequently employed to create political space for its brutal assault on Gaza.
Editor’s note: Since the publication of this interview, an Israeli police investigation has confirmed that Israeli Apache helicopters killed numerous Israeli citizens at and around the Nova electronic music festival, and that Hamas did not know in advance about the festival. The Israeli government has also acknowledged that 200 of those it counted as Israeli casualties were, in fact, Hamas militants killed by its forces on October 7, and that it may have marketed images of their charred bodies to the public as proof of Hamas’ brutality.
For all the sensationalism surrounding the events of Oct. 7, when Hamas broke through the Gaza fence and seized territory in the Gaza Envelope as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, there is still much that we do not know. The official Israeli death toll from the attack is estimated at 1,200 civilians, revised from an initial estimate of 1,400. Among this figure are several hundred civilians, which Israel says were killed by Hamas militants. Other testimony from survivors of Oct. 7 suggests an alternative explanation—that in its fervor to defeat Hamas, Israeli commanders may have willingly targeted and sacrificed Israeli soldiers and civilians in the crossfire. Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone joins The Chris Hedges Report for an in-depth look. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/18/video-what-happened-october-7/
2023=11-17 Max Blumenthal Tweet Israeli govt propagandist Mark Regev confirms reporting by me and others that burned bodies presented by Tel Aviv as evidence of Hamas atrocities were in fact Hamas activists burned by Israeli hellfire missiles. This also adds legitimacy to claims that many Israelis found burned beyond recognition were friendly fire victims. https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1725518601740767338?s=20
2023-11-17 The Chris Hedges Report with reporter Max Blumenthal on how the Israeli military launched a series of attacks on Oct. 7 designed to kill Hamas gunmen along with their Israeli hostages. https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-with-reporter
2023-11-13 The October 7 Hamas Assault on Israel The Most Successful Military Raid of this Century. Israel has characterized the attack carried out by Hamas on the various Israeli military bases and militarized settlements, or Kibbutz, which in their totality comprised an important part of the Gaza barrier system, as a massive act of terrorism, likening it to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States. Israel supports this characterization by citing the number of persons killed (some 1,200, a downward revision issued by Israel after realizing that 200 of the dead were Palestinian fighters) and detailing a wide variety of atrocities it claims were perpetrated by Hamas, including mass rape, the beheading of children, and the wonton murder of unarmed Israeli civilians.
The problem with the Israeli claims is that they are demonstrably false or misleading. Nearly a third of the Israeli casualties consisted of military, security, and police officers. Moreover, it turns out that the number one killer of Israelis on October 7 wasn’t Hamas or other Palestinian factions, but the Israeli military itself. Recently released video shows Israeli Apache helicopters indiscriminately firing on Israeli civilians trying to flee the Supernova Sukkot Gathering held in the open desert near Kibbutz Re’im, the pilots unable to distinguish between the civilians and the Hamas fighters. Many of the vehicles that the Israeli government has shown as an example of Hamas perfidy were destroyed by the Israeli Apache helicopters.
Likewise, the Israeli government has widely publicized what it is calling the “Re’im massacre,” citing a death toll of some 112 civilians it claims were murdered by Hamas. However, eyewitness accounts from both surviving Israeli civilians and military personnel involved in the fighting show that the vast majority of those killed died from fire from Israeli soldiers and tanks directed at buildings where the civilians were either hiding or being held hostage by Hamas fighters. It took two days for the Israeli military to recapture Re’im. It only did so after tanks fired into the civilian residences, collapsing them onto their occupants, and often setting them ablaze, causing the bodies of those inside to be consumed by fire. The Israeli government has publicized how it has had to make use of the services of forensic archeologists to identify human remains at the Kibbutz, implying that Hamas had burned the occupants’ home. But the fact is it was Israeli tanks that did the destruction and killing. https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/the-october-7-hamas-assault-on-israel
2023-11-01 I saw a baby who had been baked in an oven, says Israeli emergency worker
[MEK Note: We now know that IDF Tanks and Helicopters fired on the music festival and Kibbutz’s causing all the charred cars, homes, and bodies. (see – Hamas Attack October 7, 2023 – Israel Involvement]
The body of the baby came from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the site of one of Hamas’s worst massacres. An Israeli emergency worker has claimed he saw the remains of a baby who had been baked to death in an oven by Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7.
Speaking in a video testimony, Asher Moskowitz of the United Hatzalah first responder group said he made the discovery on the fourth day of the war at a military base that had been set up as a centre for identifying those murdered by Hamas. Moskowitz said the baby arrived in a small bag. Inside he saw the tiny body, burnt and swollen, bearing marks that he claimed to be able to identify as the result of the body having been pressed against a heating element. “They took the baby and put it, literally, in a kitchen oven,” Moskowitz said, recounting the assessment of professional staff at the base. “The body hardened and, unfortunately, appeared to have also swollen,” he said. “And really, the heating element of the oven was on the body itself.”
Hatzalah’s founder and president Eli Beer first made the horrific claim at an American political convention in Las Vegas. “We saw a little baby in an oven,” Eli Beer, the founder and president of Hatzalah, said in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference on Saturday night. In the days after the massacre, Israel invited foreign journalists to tour Kfar Aza and other communities hit by Hamas. Many wrote harrowing accounts about what they had seen. Last week, it showed them 43 minutes of raw footage from October 7 to counter what a government spokesperson called “a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon evolving in real time.” The IDF did not comment on Moskowitz’s claim about the baby, however, and the JC was not able to independently verify it. https://www.thejc.com/news/i-saw-a-baby-who-had-been-baked-in-an-oven-says-israeli-emergency-worker-qw2nn4os
2023-10-27 October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire? Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen.
Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, “the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was “compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists” who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time. These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives.
An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military “undoubtedly” killed numerous Israeli noncombatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she stated, referring to Israeli special forces. As David Sheen and Ali Abunimah reported in Electronic Intifada, Porat described “very, very heavy crossfire” and Israeli tank shelling, which led to many casualties among Israelis. While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, “They did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.” She added, “The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.”
According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri after admittedly “shelling” the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. “The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed,” the paper chronicled. “Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.” Much of the shelling in Be’eri was carried out by Israeli tank crews. As a reporter for the Israeli Foreign Ministry-sponsored outlet i24 noted during a visit to Be’eri, “small and quaint homes [were] bombarded or destroyed,” and “well-maintained lawns [were] ripped up by the tracks of an armored vehicle, perhaps a tank.”
Apache attack helicopters also figured heavily in the Israeli military’s response on October 7. Pilots have told Israeli media they scrambled to the battlefield without any intelligence, unable to differentiate between Hamas fighters and Israeli noncombatants, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them,” one Apache pilot commented. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
The lighting assault immediately overwhelmed Israel’s Gaza Division. Video recorded from GoPro cameras mounted on the helmets of Palestinian fighters shows Israeli soldiers cut down in rapid succession, many still dressed in underwear and caught off guard. At least 340 active soldiers and intelligence officers were killed on October 7, accounting for close to 50% of confirmed Israeli deaths. The casualties included high ranking officers like Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the commander of Israel’s Nahal Brigade. (Many first responders and armed Israeli civilians were also killed).
The Erez Crossing is the home of a massive military and Coordination of Government Activities in the [Occupied] Territories (COGAT) facility which functions as the nerve center of Israel’s siege on Gaza. When it was overrun by Palestinian fighters on October 7 with droves of army bureaucrats inside, the Israeli military flew into a panic.
According to Haaretz, the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, “entrenched himself in the division’s subterranean war room together with a handful of male and female soldiers, trying desperately to rescue and organize the sector under attack. Many of the soldiers, most of them not combat personnel, were killed or wounded outside. The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the [Erez Crossing] base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.”
Video released by Israel’s COGAT ten days after the battle – and the Israeli airstrike – shows severe structural damage to the roof of the Erez Crossing facility. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
2023-10-27 October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles However, the Israeli government has not been content to rely on verified video evidence. Instead, it continues to push discredited claims of “beheaded babies” while distributing photographs of “bodies burned beyond recognition” to insist that militants sadistically immolated their captives, and even raped some before torching them alive.
The objective behind Tel Aviv’s atrocity exhibition is clear: to paint Hamas as “worse than ISIS” while cultivating support for the Israeli army’s ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has left over 7000 dead, including at least 2500 children at the time of publication. While hundreds of wounded children in Gaza have been treated for what a surgeon described as “fourth degree burns” caused by novel weapons, the Western media’s focus remains trained on Israeli citizens supposedly “burned alive” on October 7.
Yet the mounting evidence of friendly fire orders handed down by Israeli army commanders strongly suggests that at least some of the most jarring images of charred Israeli corpses, Israeli homes reduced to rubble and burned out hulks of vehicles presented to Western media were, in fact, the handiwork of tank crews and helicopter pilots blanketing Israeli territory with shells, cannon fire and Hellfire missiles.
Indeed, it appears that on October 7, Israel’s military resorted to the same tactics it has employed against civilians in Gaza, driving up the death toll of its own citizens with the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons.
2023-10-11 Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village An international outcry erupted when Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October 10 White House Rose Garden address, while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny. According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets.
The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year. In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.” He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”
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