Testimony Puts Blame on Israel for October 7 Mass Deaths and Destruction

Aerial view of damage caused by Israel Defense Forces on October 7, 2023, falsely attributed to the Palestinian Resistance.

Israel is past-master at inciting hatred and revenge-seeking against the entire people of Palestine by attributing heinous crimes to Hamas and then saying that all Palestinians should be made to pay for these crimes. First it calls Hamas a terrorist organization and then pins acts of terrorism on it which, in fact, it never committed. In the case of Hamas' October 7 military operation which broke through Israel's apartheid wall, Israeli newspapers have been carrying reports and interviews which tell the story of what happened that day. 

An Israeli Air Force (Reserve) Col. Nof Erez has described Israel's actions on October 7 as a "mass Hannibal" event, in reference to a controversial directive ordering Israeli commanders to kill their own soldiers to prevent them being taken captive. In an interview with Ha'aretz on November 15, Col. Erez discussed the response of Israel's fleet of Apache attack helicopters as Hamas fighters infiltrated military bases and settlements in an effort to take soldiers and civilians captive back to Gaza. He describes how the pilots opened fire on multiple places along the border fence to prevent Hamas from taking the captives back, killing both Hamas fighters and Israelis. As a result, "The Hannibal directive was probably deployed because once you detect a hostage situation, this is Hannibal," he said. A 2003 Ha'aretz investigation of the directive concluded that "from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release."

On November 19, the same newspaper published the report of an Israeli security assessment based on an investigation by police which concluded that an Israeli military helicopter had opened fire at the music festival, the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, taking place near kibbutz Re'im, about five kilometres from the wall the Israeli occupiers built to keep the people of Gaza imprisoned. This military helicopter is responsible for the wounding and killing of many Israelis participating in the festival, Ha'aretz said citing the report.

Another Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, also published a report on Israeli Air Force helicopters intervening in the attack carried out by Hamas from Gaza on October 7. The newspaper reported that the Israeli forces "found it difficult to identify Hamas militants." Helicopter pilots "used artillery" against civilians at the festival, it said. To divert attention from the instructions given to the Israeli military to fire indiscriminately, the usual justification is given about Hamas hiding amongst Israeli civilians. "The Hamas terrorists were instructed to slowly blend in with the crowd and not to move under any circumstances," the newspaper report said. "In this way, they tried to fool the air force into believing that those below were Israelis. This deception worked for a while, until the Apache helicopters had to break free of all restraints. The pilots found it difficult to distinguish who was a terrorist and who was an Israeli," the report added.

The newspaper said that "when they realized that, some of them decided to use artillery shells against the terrorists independently, without getting permission from their superiors." The police report estimated that the number killed at the festival was 364, but did not reveal their identities.

In fact, since October 7, eye witness reports have made it clear that the propaganda of Israel which Canada repeats ad nauseam is not true. Investigations into how many military people and how many civilians were killed also show there were no babies and that gruesome charred remains were due to Israel's heavy artillery, not Hamas. The amount of destruction caused was also beyond the scope of the kind of artillery Hamas was carrying.


This article was published in
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Volume 53 Number 24 - November 2023

Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/MS53242.HTM


    

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