October 7 Massacre in Israel, part 1: Which Israelis are "Making Up Stories?"
November 24, 2023
1A) Introduction
This site has never promised to cover all "massacre marketing," and it hasn't done anything for some months. I was slow to decide on even this - massacre marketing by the State of Israel over the events of October 7. "Israel's 9/11" was used to justify its assault on and invasion of Gaza, which is definitely genocidal by at least some definitions (with some details unclear to me). Their attacks have killed an estimated 15-20,000 people so far, including Hamas fighters but mostly civilian and nearly half of them children. (EuroMed - "Euro-Med Monitor estimated that at least 15,271 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, including 3,561 women and 6,403 children"). Some half of North Gaza's housing has been destroyed, and around one million people are temporarily displaced, with Israel perhaps hoping to make that permanent. They seem to be dismantling and depopulating north Gaza, maybe in hopes of settling it as Israeli.
It could take a while to finish the job, depending what the job winds up being, and the Israeli people might need a lot of hate to see it through. October 7 and/or the propaganda surrounding it provided for that.
Partly from ignorance, I had no horse in this race to start. I'm certainly no fan of Israel under Netanyahu/Likud, but I also distrust Hamas. I imagine Israel is right to say they hide themselves among the people after their provocations, complicating military response and/or endangering civilians. But I couldn't say how widely they do this, and it seems Israel exaggerates this limited truth to pretend Hamas is in every building, freeing them to flatten the place.
So to start, I was half-inclined to believe that Hamas would provoke Israel with a gruesome slaughter as alleged. That still seems possible, to at least some extent. However, upon examining the claims and evidence in middling detail, I suspect most or all of the extreme allegations were fabricated, to help Israel justify its appalling plans.
Hamas fighters (terrorists) can be seen on videos, including their own body cameras, killing some civilians, reportedly beheading soldiers, and desecrating their bodies. As far as I've seen, they display a mix of hate and restraint that's bound to vary, Here (IDF on X): on body camera footage they threaten to kill an Israeli Arab "collaborator," but the worst the video captures is one fighter kicking the man in the face as another calms him down and has him handcuffed. Here: on security camera footage, it seems 2 young women trying to flee are shot dead by a gunman, one after she drops as if begging for mercy.
Consider that Israel claims it killed about 1,000 of the attackers, maybe all of them equipped with cameras. But I haven't seen even a claim that any of the gravest crimes - like rape, or beheading babies - has ever occurred before any camera. That's likely because these things never happened. All after-the-fact evidence that's presented fails (see part 4), and so it says the same thing: these stories were probably just made up to sow more hate.
It's also clear now that the scale of Hamas' killing is distorted. At least some and perhaps the vast majority of civilians killed that day (and in standoffs sometimes running 2 days after) were caused by the Israeli military itself - and not just by accident. This emerging picture is not as clear as some think, and the reality is likely more mixed than "Hamas massacre" or "IDF false-flag." I suspect it's more of the latter, but what are suspicions really worth?
In the next 3 posts (still in progress), I'll consider the evidence presented and what it actually shows so the reader can form their own improved view. I've gathered some reports and debunks published by others, along with some critical review of the same, and some original observations. In one case, I found strong clues suggesting a young woman was killed by Israeli helicopter fire, and also suggesting some twisted manipulation of the victim's corpse to show how she was "raped" and "burned alive" by Hamas. I should probably lead with that strong medicine, but maybe just the mention here lets me start with this introduction and buys me time to finish the ordered approach I set out on, where that case comes up in part 3.
1B) 10/7 Death Toll
Concerns about Gaza civilian deaths under Israel's bombs are often met with the note that Palestinians, children included, basically deserve it for tending to support Hamas, voting for them years back, or even celebrating the 10/7 attacks (which they saw differently). Or some of them (the children) might be kind of innocent and their deaths are Hamas' fault alone for starting the war; the IDF is dropping the bombs killing them, but they need to do this, either to hit Hamas targets or just for revenge, and should never let up until Hamas is destroyed, however many Palestinians die or get chased away in the process (and to some, it's "the more the better."). Humanitarian concerns are for humans, and ever since some of them behaved inhumanly on 10/7, Palestinians cannot be considered human. This is a serious and driving trope is Israel right now. It's pretty scary. Netanyahu has invoked Amalek.
But after all, Hamas did start it by breaking a ceasefire with their provocative kidnappings and especially with their grisly massacres on the 7th, where as some say they murdered over 1,400 innocent civilians.
First, it seems people on both sides are confused about the death toll. Early counts grew with searches and resolving hostage standoffs to finally claim "At least 1,400 people were killed, many of them civilians, including children." (HRW) About 350 military, police and intelligence deaths were acknowledged, but it was claimed over 1,000 civilians were massacred, all by Hamas. Then it was revised down to "about 1,200" total by Nov. 10 (Israel revises Hamas attack death toll to 'around 1,200' | Reuters). As far as I can tell, this is close to a final number and it's probably a reliable count. The best source I have is: https://oct7map.com/ - an interactive site based around a map of the attack sites all around Gaza's periphery. This might be dated, but it says "The attacks claimed the lives of more than 1,194 individuals, of which 843 of the identified bodies are civilians." Some were still buried in rubble or missing, but this may be close to a final number. That leaves 351 military. Earlier reports had at least 340 active soldiers and intelligence officers killed. That squares pretty well.
As for that revision: Israeli ambassador Mark Regev recently explained to Mehdi Hassan - as an example of how transparent his government is being - how some 200 of those dead were actually Hamas fighters so badly burned and disfigured, and in such proximity to badly burned and disfigured Israelis, that "we thought they were ours." Quds News Network on X: "Israel admits some 200 of the bodies they said were Israelis killed on October 7 turned out to be Hamas fighters. https://t.co/5mWfRZe4MF" / X (twitter.com) We'll come back to this.
At least 843 killed civilians, broken down for reference: 364+ were killed at the Nova rave (updated count), ~55 were killed in and around the city of Sderot, ~424 were killed in the various Kibbutz attacks and scattered on the roads in between them. 100-130+ of those were at Be'eri, at least some of them "undoubtedly" killed by the IDF (see part 2 if you don't yet know about this, or the Gray Zone piece linked below), and ~300 died in the other kibbutz attacks combined.
There's another list at Ha'aretz of Israelis or foreign civilians and Israeli military, killed anywhere that day or since then - "Over 1,300 Israelis, civilians and soldiers were killed ... in the atrocities of October 7 and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war." It's not complete, even for those confirmed/reported: 1,152 names when I checked, about 1/3 of them military, and some postdating 10/7. I estimate perhaps 200 victims of the day aren't included, for whatever reason.
I've seen this list used, several times now, to refute "40 beheaded babies" by showing there was just one (specified) baby listed, assuming that's all that was killed. That was true when I first checked (10 month old girl, killed in Be'eri), then it was revised next day to remove that entry and list no (specified) babies at all. So the list is not complete and, perhaps for privacy reasons, is specifically lacking in infants who were killed. I suspect a few were killed (5-10?), along with some toddlers ("babies" to some), maybe along with some older kids making 40 total? But they died in the disputed circumstances we'll be considering.
But it was the manner of killing, as reported, that unsettled so many, and opened some minds to consider genocide in Gaza a fit response. It turns out no one but British tabloids and the like ever said 40 babies were beheaded, in one village or in total (Propaganda and co on X ). But killing children, some of them by beheading, killing adults in several ways, committing insanely brutal rape that breaks bones, raping children, torture, dismemberment and mutilation, fetus removal and execution, burning people alive ... these claims stand, supported by the Israeli government and accepted by its supporters worldwide.
But did Hamas really do all of that? Did they even do any of it? There is evidence to show something horrible clearly happened to a lot of people, so what else could it be?
1C) Which Israelis are "Making up Stories"?
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Israeli I24 News ran a critical review by Philip Podolsky November 07 that explained how Waters is "notorious for his anti-Israel vitriol" and stands accused of "antisemitic abuse." This is meant to shed light on why Waters now accuses 'Israelis' of 'making Up Stories' About October 7. (Podolsky seems to forget how he has even dressed as a Nazi-ish guy on stage, and wrote songs about killing "queers," "coons," joint-smokers, people with "spots" ... and of course Jews. And he had a pig with Shell oil logo on it, etc.)
He's, like, a modern-day holocaust denier. Podolsky grants Waters saying "If war crimes were committed, I condemn them," but notes how he followed this by "casting further doubt on whether those took place." Though his reading adds or subtracts little from the evidence in question, Waters' doubts are valid, and his citations are good.
"There may have been individual things," he said, referring to a report in Grayzone, which denied much of the evidence Israel has produced from the scenes of the massacre. Grayzone is a widely discredited site known for airing propaganda for the Russian and Syrian regimes, including the denial of Damascus's chemical weapons attacks on civilian population."
The Gray Zone has refuted Syrian chemical attack claims partly based on amazing analysis I was involved with, pairing ballistic readings with video geolocation to essentially prove, in 2021, Western-backed (and Israeli-backed) Islamic militants launched whatever chemical attack there was on August 21, 2013. Syrian insurgents guilty of ‘red line’ 2013 sarin chemical attack, study finds - The Grayzone One way or another, they - and not Syria's government - caused the several hundred to 1,000+ civilians deaths, including hundreds of children, that occurred just then. Israel has never cared much about the truth of that incident. Invested as they are in toppling the "Assad regime," they'll accept or help fabricate any accusation against them and use it as a pretext to bomb some airport there, at the same time absolving and encouraging genocidal terrorist massacres.
For some reason, I24 did not link its readers to the Gray Zone piece or name the author, Max Blumenthal - "my good friend," as Waters calls him - who can't as easily be called antisemitic. But then Waters wasn't very specific, so I'm not even sure, but ... I think this is it, questioning Israel's evidence - great piece: October 7 testimonies reveal Israel’s military ‘shelling’ Israeli citizens with tanks, missiles - The Grayzone, posted October 27. And note others had already made a similar case - e.g. MondoWeiss.net on Oct. 22.
Podolsky also fails to relate its actual core argument; Israelis were killed in their homes, but at least partly by their own military, in a cynically disproportionate response. Anyone who reads the article can see it's based mostly on reports from Israeli media citing survivors and military personnel involved in the events. Therefore, Podolsky's and I24's implication is that these Israelis are making up stories. The military command is telling it right, and anyone who says otherwise is either engaged in antisemitic smears or - if they're Israeli Jews themselves, well ... one way or another, they can't be trusted.
Here are the two Israeli stories, broadly speaking, one of which was "made up."
The story from Israeli civilian captives: noting that others tell different stories (see below), that either story could be untrue, told under terrorist duress or to bolster Israel's case, and that both stories could be true to some extent ... several accounts (many but not all included in the article in question) converge on a basic picture: the Hamas men were not brutal but polite for kidnappers, and seemed intent on taking captives peacefully for rational gain - they did not seem bent on murder, rape, torture or mutilation. Most or all civilian deaths were - from what they saw - caused by powerful Israeli assaults that killed captors and captives alike. I won't relate any of these accounts right here, but by topic over the next 3 posts.
This might sound like an insane development, but consider this is Israel and, as Blumenthal noted:
"If Israel’s military had intentionally targeted areas where it knew the captives were held, its actions would have been consistent with Israel’s Hannibal Directive. The military procedure was established in 1986 following the Jibril Agreement, a deal in which Israel traded 1150 Palestinian prisoners for three Israeli soldiers. Following heavy political backlash, the Israeli military drafted a secret field order to prevent future kidnappings. The proposed operation drew its name from the Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself rather than be held captive by the enemy."
In the few cases this directive was followed, the suicide was "assisted". One possible example occurred that day, at the overrun Erez crossing, where the commander called in a strike to destroy the still-occupied base, to kill the terrorists and/or prevent the capture of any troops (MondoWeiss).
Another example from the same day was at the police station in Sderot, a city militants couldn't take like the villages, with some 50-60 scattered, perhaps targeted killings, but including several seniors killed at a bus stop. The only hostage situation that formed here was at the police station. The Cradle reports: "Hamas fighters had taken over the local police station, and were holding Israeli police captive inside. Both the Hamas fighters and Israeli police were killed when the Israeli army fired tank shells at the police station, killing everyone. Israeli forces then bulldozed the station." Mapping the Massacres (oct7map.com) says, in contrast, the terrorists killed "approximately 30 individuals" at the station before the IDF arrived and "regained control of the situation, neutralizing some 35 terrorists in the process," and apparently killing no one else. Just 8 red dots are shown, and 8 names of those "killed on duty" are given. Does the "approximately 30" deaths include "some 35 terrorists?" Once IDF was there, "the Southern District commander ordered the event to be ended at all costs - even if it meant destroying the station. Just after 22:00, a bulldozer began to demolish the station. This triggered heavy exchanges of fire, and the station began to burn. After a prolonged battle, the police announced that control of the station had been regained." No survivors are mentioned.
As I gather, the Hannibal option is usually meant for military personnel facing abduction, not police, or civilians. But extending it to civilians would have the same basic logic - prevent terrorists from getting any advantage from kidnapping Israeli citizens. Instead of take-no-prisoners, it's an allow-no-prisoners policy. You don't have to bother with exchanging anything for their freedom if they're simply dead from the start. And anyway, 10/7 was a case where both civilians and military were abducted - any effort to differentiate who to kill might fail, and widely.
IDF Reserve pilot Col. Nof Erez doesn't seem to have direct, inside knowledge of the day's events, but when interviewed by Ha'aretz, he said "the Hannibal directive was probably deployed" for this hostage situation, but it was not the isolated kidnapping they had trained for; "What we saw here was a MASS HANNIBAL. There were many openings in the fence, thousands of people in many different vehicles, both with hostages and without hostages. It was an impossible mission to identify and to do what [the pilots] did." In such a chaotic situation, they would almost surely kill some hostages and perhaps even civilians fleeing from the terrorists. https://twitter.com/WarWatchs/status/1726671271017013494
The IDF would deny the killings in such a case, as much as possible blaming the enemy, and so the killings would add propaganda value - there's an actual motive to kill civilians "in the crossfire" or "Hannibalize" them, even in large numbers. They could re-brand every arbitrary insult of the blasts as some bizarre Hamas torture, as it seems they have done. People get much angrier over a massive and grisly terrorist massacre of children than over some calculated abductions.
The story from the Israeli military: Hamas militants abducted some locals but opted to brutally massacre most of those they ran across, committing every act of barbarism short of perhaps cannibalism. They say this all happened before the IDF arrived to eliminate the terrorists with heavy weaponry. The terrorists might have tried using the captives as human shields hoping to prevent attack, but the IDF did attack - they'd have us believe - without killing any of the captives. All harm that was caused to them can be assumed from Hamas, who had already hacked and burned everyone available in the crudest and cruelest way possible, in "ISIS fashion," leaving them no human shields to even try working with. That, of course, is because Palestinians are inhuman beasts full of hate and lacking in foresight, and Israel would be right to be inhuman back, to kill thousands of kids in Gaza as they flatten the place and re-populate it with God's chosen people. (The last part is just sort of implied.)
The same basic story also comes from some survivor/witnesses, like Dani Fux (second-hand source: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/massacre-on-kibbutz-beeri/), with a sort of vague overview of events as witnessed from a hiding spot in the attic, emphasizing a curiously explicit acceptance of a "Hannibal" ending consistent with the story he and the IDF deny:
"The terrorists went from door to door, abducted people or killed them. Sometimes they only killed. Sometimes they took the kids and killed the parents, sometimes the other way around.” ... Dani had a handgun and he and his parents agreed that they would use it if they were detected by the terrorists. They would die in all likelihood under that scenario, the family agreed, but “we would not be taken prisoner.”
So even if the army did wind up killing some people, maybe it was for the best. Nothing is worse than being taken alive by those Muslims, who might skin you alive or rape you to death, or just create a disadvantage for Israel ... as it continues trying to keep its people safe from genocide ... here, perhaps, by killing its people ... to justify some revenge genocide ... that could spark some revenge genocide later ... maybe requiring some "final solution" because, as they say, "never again."
1D) Discrediting the Messenger, Killing the Message
Philip Podolsky at I24 knows the playbook - attack the messenger instead of the message. You accept the military story and any similar reports, and ignore the discrepant stories from Israeli survivors ... until Pink Floyd and the Crazy Zone cite them. Then you blame them and "antisemitism" for inventing what could be the ugly, uncomfortable truth. It's the truth that the Netanyahu regime fears, and those who know it best ... some would be involved in the crime and would mainly keep quiet as ordered. Some saw part of the story and have told it, while others are blockaded inside Gaza, and the best witnesses are of course dead. There are still accounts to be heard, but we might not get to hear them for some time.
As Blumenthal adds in relating this: "During a press conference that day, she recounted the humane treatment she received from her captors." She never mentioned witnessing any kind of massacre by either side. But then she and some 70-80 others were presumably whisked away from kibbutz Nir Oz before a battle ensued there. In the end, the remaining terrorists were killed, and some 27+ remaining civilians also wound up dead. She probably saw none of that.
It should be no surprise that, as Blumenthal notes, "The spectacle of Lifshitz’s release was treated as a propaganda disaster by the Israeli government’s spinmeisters, with officials grumbling that allowing her to speak publicly was a grave “mistake.” They probably prefer that she had been killed back at Nir Oz. Allowing Lifshitz, Yasmin Porat, Tuval Escapa, and the others to speak publicly is all a “mistake.” The truth they help reveal complicates the genocidal war effort. In the current climate, we can expect pressure to come down on publishers to prevent more stories from emerging.
Like others have, Blumenthal contrasts this regret with the Times of Israel report that “The army is concerned that further hostage releases by Hamas could lead the political leadership to delay a ground incursion or even halt it midway.”" And he compares it also with the Hamas claim - unverified as far as I know - that Israel had killed “almost 50” of the 240 hostages with its missile strikes, even before October was out. It seems like they'd still rather kill those people while killing more Gazans than to have them freed, in exchange for fuel, for a ceasefire, for any Palestinian prisoners, any more PR points for the enemy, or even just to get its own people back.
This would be consistent with a policy implied above - it was better to have those civilians killed - so long as that can be blamed on Hamas - than to be captured and used to Hamas' benefit.
Late add, perhaps to move: "An anonymous group of Israelis has written an open letter calling for an independent investigation. But Israel seems unlikely to allow this, and appears to be covering up the evidence, burying some bodies before they have been identified." (https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/an-open-letter-to-israelis-from-israelis-we-deserve-the-truth-about-october-7/ - via The evidence Israel killed its own citizens on 7 October | The Electronic Intifada)
Brilliant writing, as always establishing coherence out of the panoply of disparate intelligence.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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