Executing a Pregnant Woman and her Fetus: Really?

October 7 Massacre in Israel, Part 6: Executing a Pregnant Woman and her Fetus: Really? 

December 18, 2023

additions 12/31

Again, an insert instead of a final post in what was started as a 4-part series. Part 6 now, and part 7 later, and likely that won't be final either. I don't mean to try and untangle every claim and identify every trick used to maximize Israel's propaganda case against Hamas, but I keep finding ones that seem worth the effort. 

6A) Witnesses to a Slaughter

New York post, Nov. 1: Eli Beer, the founder of the volunteer-based Israeli EMS organization United Hatzalah, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, relates terrible scenes he personally witnessed of men, women and children "murdered in a holocaust in Israel in 2023.” Eli Beer, President of United Hatzalah testimonials from October 7th, 2023, at the RJC (youtube.com)

"I saw with my own eyes a woman who was pregnant, 4 months pregnant - she was in a little village, a little kibbutz - they came into her house, in front of her kids, they opened up her stomach [slicing motion] - she was pregnant - they opened up her stomach, took out the baby, and stabbed the little tiny baby in front of her and then shot her in front of her family. Then they killed the rest of the kids." 

Beer says he saw that "with my own eyes" but the original (alleged) witness to this scene was apparently Yossi Landau, southern region head of operations for a competitor rescue group, ZAKA. To i24NEWS, on October 12, Landau claimed that he witnessed this in the hard-hit kibbutz of Be'eri. "In the first home he and his colleagues entered "we see a pregnant lady lying on the floor, and then we turn her around and see that the stomach is cut open, wide open. The unborn baby, still connected with an umbilical cord, was stabbed with a knife. And the mother was shot in the head. And you use your imagination, trying to figure out what came first." 

Here at a press conference, Landau (left) relates the scene, almost in tears: Zaka Testimonial from The Hamas Massacre (around the 20:30 mark). "Her stomach was butchered open," he says, and the still-connected baby had been stabbed. He says his team had a debate whether to use one body bag or two.

Landau relates his methodology for deciding what happened: "Now we go to the same imagination we're using. let's talk to the body. Let's see what happened. Did she see that, what was done to her baby?" His increasingly sad demeanor suggests yes, the mother had to see it all before she died. But he remains open-minded and optimistic. "Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she didn't have that suffering. We don't know." United Hatzalah's Mr. Beer - who apparently wasn't even there? - seemed to imagine what came first and later much more vividly and related it as fact - the mother and some other children were made to watch before they were all killed.

This interesting piece at The Grayzone notes how ZAKA and U.H. compete for donations and other funding, and that seems to drive them each to bear witness - truly or falsely - to the gravest imaginable atrocities against Jews. But even as they trip over each other to claim their "own eyes" saw all the worst crimes, they have a shared mission - to illustrate how Israel needs to avenge a special class of crime that transcends things like the rules of war and normal human decency. 

Beer noted simply "These are not regular enemies."  Landau was more philosophical: the killers are not human, despite their form, and not even animals, he says, struggling to put it in words: "they don't belong to our world." They're supernatural, like some kind of demons crossed over to plague us - temporarily, he hopes. 

Landau was hailed by the American Jewish Council as a hero who "brought light in our darkest hour." He knows this, and has little patience for anyone complicating his contributions to Israel's ambitious new project. As Max Blumenthal noted "Yossi Landau proclaimed in a December 3 interview that anyone who questions his stories “should be together with the Hamas terrorists, and he should be killed.” Scandal-stained Israeli ‘rescue’ group fuels October 7 fabrications - The Grayzone 

6B) "No Connection" to Be'eri ... or to Reality?

Ha'aretz reported on December 4 how "Hamas committed documented atrocities, but a few false stories feed the deniers," and this butchered woman claim was one of them. 

Article link: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/hamas-committed-documented-atrocities-but-a-few-false-stories-feed-the-deniers/0000018c-34f3-da74-afce-b5fbe24f0000. I tried to register, but it didn't work. A Hebrew version was available here, and auto-translated for citation in this post, as "Ha'aretz 12/4." (It might also be covered in Libération's investigation, although this review doesn't mention it.) 

The Ha'aretz article cites an unnamed ZAKA worker who "repeatedly spoke about the body of a pregnant woman found at Kibbutz Be'eri whose abdomen had been cut open." This should probably be Yossi Landau, and it's not clear why he remains unnamed in the article. "He repeated his account to Haaretz," and even doubled-down on specific details, "adding that he saw this woman at House 426 on the kibbutz. “It was full of blood,” he said. “When we turned her over, we saw that the abdomen was open. A knife was next to her, and we saw the fetus attached by the umbilical cord, and she had been shot from behind.” He might be backing away from the stabbed fetus claim, or just didn't specify it this time.

He also "said that he found the woman next to the house's entrance, and that a 6- or 7-year-old boy was found shot in the safe room." But as Ha'aretz found, no boy anywhere near this age was reported killed in Be'eri. Furthermore, they reported, "House 426 is also a two-family house where elderly families lived; Rafi Mordo was murdered and his neighbor, Simcha Shani, was wounded. Shani and her husband did not mention a pregnant woman or a family with young children who were guests in their house."  

Note also that Pessi Cohen's #424 is just two houses over. This is where, as two surviving witnesses describe in detail, IDF tank shells killed 13 civilian hostages - including two children aged 12 - after Hamas had seemingly killed none of those hostages (see part 2). 

There was supposed video proof of this crime that circulated briefly, and was even touted by President Herzog's wife Michal. She said in a Newsweek Op-Ed that “a Hamas video from a kibbutz shows terrorists torturing a pregnant woman and removing her fetus.” (The Grayzone 12/6). Ha'aretz 12/4 noted "A clip was posted on social media describing the murder of a pregnant woman, but the website Fake Reporter and other sources say the video was not filmed in Israel." The supplied video was showed "a Mexican drug cartel torturing a prisoner to death" (The Grayzone 12/6). See also: Israeli Accounts Share Deceptive Video, Accusing Hamas of Killing a Pregnant Woman | Misbar Ignoring that it's appalling this happened anywhere for any reason, the site's finding: the victim is apparently a Mexican male, and it's his heart removed, not a fetus. But by the time we figured that out, the "proven" crime was touted in Newsweek and all over the place. (see 12/31 add below for more details)

Ha'retz also reported that, by some representative communication, "the kibbutz adds that “the story of the pregnant woman reported by Zaka is not relevant to Be'eri.” Furthermore, Ha'aretz reported "The police say the case is not known to them, and a pathology source at the Shura army base told Haaretz that he was unaware of the case." This source, the investigating police, and the kibbutz of Be'eri, among others ... all of them, according to Landau's December 3 comment, should be put "together with Hamas and killed." 

6C) The Match? A Pregnant Women Killed in a ROADSIDE Shelter

However much he chokes up on recalling the details, "Landau appears to have crafted this testimony" of the butchered woman - as Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone contends - "based on a rumor that an anonymous military source spread online two days prior." The cited post (Hallel Bitton Rosen on X), from October 10, says: "Yesterday at 18:36, while we were gathering dead bodies in Beeri, we entered a safe room in one of the houses and found a woman around 30 years old, lying on a blood soaked towel with a fetus connected to her by an umbilical cord." That does sound like the same scene. Maybe Landau just picked this up, or perhaps he was actually there among the witnesses?

Blumenthal questions the claim. "According to the source, the supposedly pregnant victim was 30 years old. This alone discredited Landau’s claim, because the only female victims [of similar age - ed] recorded in or around Beeri were 44-year-old Rinat Segev Even and 22-year-old Tair Bira — and neither were pregnant. In fact, no pregnant women were registered among those killed on October 7." 

But this is not correct. There may have been no women of reproductive age in the area (some others were killed, mostly older - one age 48 and I'm not sure on the rest). But there was at least one pregnant woman killed in the massacre, and another was wounded, losing her child.  

Recalling the victim's age as "around 30" and Eli Beer's specifying 4 months pregnant, they seem to be referring to Nitzan Rahoum, 28. This may be an all-new story, explaining why Blumenthal and others have missed it. The Times of Israel reported only on December 10: 

Lidor Levy, 28, and Nitzan Rahoum, 28, an engaged couple who lived together in the central moshav of Geulim, were murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7. Rahoum was four months pregnant when she was killed. ... Levy and Rahoum sought refuge in a roadside bomb shelter — separate from her uncle and cousins — which Hamas terrorists besieged and threw grenades inside. Levy sought to flee and was slain in a volley of gunfire, while Rahoum is believed to have been murdered by a grenade along with many others." Oct7map.com lists Nitzam Rahum, age 28. It's not clear how relevant the dot placement is, but her red dot is mapped south of the rave, along the road near Re'im, not even close to Be'eri. 

There is daschcam video of Hamas fighters/terrorists tossing a grenade into such a shelter, when a man runs out very fast, passing the attackers, but is shot down a few meters out. That may be the same scene, or it might have happened twice. This is said to be the scene where off-duty IDF soldier Aner Shapira tossed some grenades back out before he was finally killed. The video shows at least 2 grenades tossed in beside rifle fire and one RPG shell shot in. (Video w/notes on X) 

Whether Ms. Rahoum was killed in the above video or another scene, it's possible the killers stepped into the shelter and butchered her in the described way - not that anyone describes such a thing happening in a roadside shelter. But grenades can do terrible things to the human body, and to bodies within bodies, without any deliberate surgical cruelty like Landau and Beer imagined. The closest Hamas got to doing that might be seen above, or it might have looked the same. And the post quoted above might be accurate enough in describing the aftermath, aside from "a safe room in one of the houses." Having it in a house in Be'eri, and a specific one, seeing the knife and signs of deliberate slaughter, and divining the family made to watch before their own murder ... that all seems like imagination straying miles from the reality of events.

Add 12/31: There's an interview video where Landau explains how, on his way to Be'eri, he stopped at a roadside shelter and saw some 20 people "burned alive," not killed by grenades. But he didn't mention seeing any pregnant woman killed there. He recalls seeing that later on.

6D) The Match? A Fetus is Removed and Dies

Ha'aretz 12/4 seems to miss this likely match, because it wasn't reported yet, and/or because they were focused on Be'eri, as Landau had specified. The closest match they found there was a case where a pregnant woman's unborn child was removed and died from injuries ... but this happened in a hospital, and the mother wound up alive in a bed there, not dead in a pool of blood in house 426.

"In another incident, on the morning of October 7, a heavily pregnant Bedouin woman was on her way to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva because her contractions had begun. Terrorists shot her in the stomach. Later hospital staff delivered the baby girl, who died a few hours later." That woman came from Be'eri. The same article says at another point: "Ten-month-old Mila Cohen was murdered in the massacre, along with the baby still in the womb of her mother who died after her mother was shot on the way to hospital." Mila Cohen and her father Ohad were killed in Be'eri.

Ha'aretz heard that woman was shot in the belly by terrorists on the way to the hospital, because the baby chose then to start coming out ("her contractions had begun"). But a detailed account of how the Cohens suffered three generations wiped out by Hamas in Kibbutz Be'eri - JNS.org (where "wiped out" means "lost at least one member") tells a much different story. This refers to "Sandra and Ohad Cohen together with their three children, ages 9, 3 and 10 months." The family hid in their shelter even after Hamas men shot through the door, killing baby Mila. The attackers then started a fire to smoke the family out. Ohad led an escape attempt through the window and was shot dead. The pregnant Sandra and her surviving children came out and were taken captive.   

"The terrorists took the mother, the two remaining kids, along with an elderly woman in a wheelchair and her Filipino caretaker Gracie, and started to walk them to the kibbutz gate, she said. Suddenly, Israeli security forces appeared and the old woman shouted “soldiers, soldiers!” In the ensuing shootout Sandra Cohen was hit four times in the lung and once each in the arm and leg, but called on her two kids to escape together to a neighboring house." 

Sandra was also reportedly shot in the belly and the unborn child, and that may be what started birthing contractions prematurely. But she somehow wound up outside Hamas captivity and in the hospital after this, as if they let her go to and get emergency care, after whoever exactly had shot her in that exchange of fire. That's not exactly slicing out the baby and stabbing it to death before her eyes. But is it even supposed to be the same story?

Side-note: Was Mila Cohen beheaded? As part 5 explained, IDF search and rescue chief Col. Golan Vach presumably describes Mila - the only one of 9 "babies" he saw that he described as actually very young (maybe 1-2 years), and Mila was the only baby near that age reportedly killed in Be'eri or anywhere. But this baby had been beheaded somehow, in the foiled protection of, we would assume, her deceased mother. But they were found outside, the woman shot in the back, not the head, and she wasn't noted as pregnant or slaughtered. The above story says "the family huddled together in their safe room as terrorists shot at the door, killing their 10-month-old daughter, Mila." It sounds like they had to leave her body behind, and of course Sandra survived. So what baby, if any, did Vach see?

6E) ZAKA "Might have Misinterpreted..."

Ha'aretz 12/4: "As for the pregnant woman, Zaka said that due to the condition of the bodies when they were found, the volunteers might have misinterpreted what they saw." Yossi Landau, with his 30+ years of experience, might have made one of three mistakes here, and he might even have done it honestly: 

1) Did he see the 4-month pregnant woman killed by grenades in a roadside shelter and remember seeing it at house 426, amid signs of slaughter instead of an obvious grenade attack? 

2) Did he hear of the woman surviving crossfire and a stillbirth at the hospital, and remember it as finding her and the fetus slaughtered in home 426? 

3) Did he actual see at house 426 its killed occupant, Raffi Mordo, and remember it wrongly? Mordo was aged 84, a bit overweight by the photo, and not the hardest man to mistake for a woman (Mapping the Massacres (oct7map.com)) In the vicinity of Hamas fighters and also battles including IDF tanks, he might have somehow become disemboweled neear the entrance, and Mr. Landau might have just imagined a fetus in that mess, maybe "talked to the body" for a while, and the rest just followed.

Eli Beer with his professional eye could have made a similar mistake in re-telling the story. But both of them might re-combine the evidence deliberately to fabricate new crimes. they can wheel freely interpreting things like just what happened and even where, but sticking loosely to actual details (4 months pregnant, etc.) in case it comes up - "the whole thing was a traumatized blur, all our critics are antisemitic, etc." Long-term story survival or the historical record were never the issue. They just needed to be "confused" enough to say this stuff once, get it in print and echoing around, get the donations coming in and the hearts hardened as the bombs start falling. Then their main job is done. The mumbled excuses and perhaps even consequences - some resignations or early retirements ... that can come later.

Add 12/31: The Video

The Misbar analysis cited above featured the supposed video posted by Brooke Goldstein, "Exec Dir @LawfareProject . Civil Rights Lawyer. Author of #EndJewHatred: A Manual for Mobilization - Activists in the #EndJewHatred movement." Post deleted - explanation: "I posted a horrific video of a pregnant woman being cut open. Before I posted this video it was confirmed. Now I am double, and triple checking it’s confirmed. And if it remains confirmed I will post it again." Later, getting less sure "It is absolutely verified by the Israelis that a pregnant woman was cut open and was left for dead. We are still verifying if this is the footage of that incident." It doesn't seem she ever came back to clarify. (Even Instagram called her out, blocking her access to EndJewHatred over their rules on "fraud and deception")

More recently, some troll accounts have been re-posting an edit of the supposed video. "Kelly Green" "Kelly Green (@KellyGr73198939) / X (twitter.com) - a "semi retired Obgyn" from Montana, who Joined November 2022, mainly to post Israeli propaganda about October 7, and especially about alleged sexual violence against women.  "She" posted (now deleted for rules violation - it showed a huge video frame unblurred, with no warning) "Well there’s this. Hamas filmed the slaughter of a pregnant woman, sliced off her breast, cut open her belly, ripped her baby out and beheaded it. You can watch it live right here. https://thisishamas.com." From an OBGYN, that should be an informed opinion, but of course it's not.

The breast-slicing and fetus beheading are new details. I don't know if the site is safe and there's no value to going there. But I had to go and see the video excerpt. It's sickening, even to me. Optional description: A living man is held down by several others a main butcher flays the skin off his chest and belly, then slices it open from the bottom. Someone slaps the man in the face a few times, as if to keep him awake and watching. At one point, his flexing causes a sort of pale balloon of flesh to emerges on its own from a slit in his belly muscle. It's similar to a baby's head, but it's probably his intestines. The butcher ignores this, not pulling out the "baby" for any type of killing, as he starts splitting the man's sternum to get at his heart. The video cuts there, as it was straying from the script.

Video matches (comparing stills at the Misbar analysis): the victim's mouth is taped shut, as noted, so "she would not scream." His head is laid on the belly of a heavyset man in denim shorts. Something tells me that's the victim's father. He was reportedly killed afterwards, by beheading, though I haven't seen that segment. Anyway, the two men were shown before, the man in shorts and the other, with his mouth already taped shut. That's plain as day. Also note the crime is filmed outdoors in bright sunlight, not inside an Israeli woman's house.

The website hedges it bets, noting "This video has not yet been verified as part of the murder committed by the Palestinians on October 7. But, as of now, we can confirm that the police have a photographic record of the pregnant body showing the same result as what was done in the unverified video (We might be able to publish it soon), a confession of the murderers who were captured and interrogated, and testimonies of the body collectors (“Zaka”) and medical teams in the field. Press HERE to see testimonies from a few hours after what he saw." 

I predict they will never show these photos of "the same result" because they do not match this scene, or the related stories. Most likely, they show the single pregnant woman killed under very different circumstances (see below).