Revisiting the October 7 Hamas Attack — Did Israel Kill most of the Israeli Civilians?
21 December 2023 by Larry Johnson
For those not inclined to read to the end, here’s the bottomline — Israeli sources are admitting that the Israeli military killed its own civilians due to the oxymoronic term, “friendly fire.”
The Government of Israel, in the aftermath of this debacle, worked furiously to proclaim the Hamas attack as mindless terrorism that had no other purpose than to slaughter Jews. Netanyahu’s government lied about Hamas murdering 40 babies and raping women. Not true. The only children killed that day were victims of the Israeli military.
Israeli media reported earlier that a 12-year-old girl, Liel Hetzroni, was killed in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel.
According to the reports, following Liel’s killing, her grandfather Avia, twin brother Yanai and aunt Ayala were taken to another location, where they were killed along with more than 10 other hostages and then Hamas allegedly set fire to the building. . . .
However, after Yasmin Porat, who was in the house where the twins were held hostage, had said that the deaths were caused by Israeli tank fires, Hadas Dagan, the owner of the house where the hostages were held, also broke her silence.
In an interview with Channel 12 in Israel, Dagan confirmed that the Israeli army attacked the house where Israeli civilians were held by Hamas with tank fires and heavy weapons.
Recounting the horror over the killing of 14 people in the house, including her husband, Dagan talked about the moment Israeli soldiers arrived in front of their house. “At that point, it was clear to me that our role is to be a human shield between our (Israeli) forces that arrived and them (Hamas).”
The Hamas attack was planned months in advance. We now know that Israeli intelligence officers tried to warn their bosses but were ignored. The Hamas plan was simple and had two objectives — 1) attack Israeli military position and kill soldiers, and 2) capture hostages to be used as bargaining chips to secure the release of imprisoned Palestinians. As I noted in a previous post, Hamas hit elements of the elite Golani Brigade and killed 72 of its members. That is not terrorism, that is war.
YNET News published a piece today on “friendly fire” casualties by the Israeli military and buried this at the bottom of their piece:
Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF believes that beyond the operational investigations of the events, it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents due to the immense and complex quantity of them that took place in the kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities due to the challenging situations the soldiers were in at the time.
I guess this is Israel’s version of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell.” Remember the rave in the desert that was attacked by Hamas paragliders? The Hamas attackers were carrying rifles and pistols. They had no weapon system capable of causing this damage to the vehicles. These were hit by missiles fired by Israeli military helicopters.
The GrayZone’s reporting on the October 7 attacks has upended the account offered by the Israeli Government:
Unverified claims circulated by Israel that Hamas militants beheaded 40 babies on 7 October were widely rejected as propaganda which, critics argue, was designed to garner sympathy for Israel to carry out collective punishment of Gaza’s 2.2 million. However, a closer examination of events by The Grayzone tells a different story: one in which the Israeli military itself bears responsibility for numerous civilian deaths. The emerging details not only contradict the Israeli government’s version of events, but indicate that, in the chaos of battle, reckless Israeli fire likely led to significant casualties among the Israeli population.
More evidence comes from witness Danielle Rachiel, who described nearly being killed after escaping from the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival. As she drove to safety, Israeli security forces shot directly at her vehicle until she shouted in Hebrew to identify herself as Israeli.
The Israeli news outlet, Yedioth Aharanoth, is reported saying that “the pilots realised that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian … The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first and, only at a certain point, did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”
Meanwhile, footage from inside kibbutzes shows absolute devastation resembling Israel’s repeated bombardment of Gaza over the years. Apache helicopter pilots have admitted to firing continuously without intelligence on targets, while tank crews were ordered to shell homes, regardless of Israeli hostages potentially inside.
People who may have doubted the GrayZone reporting now have additional evidence to weigh in the aftermath of Israeli soldiers murdering three Israeli hostages who escaped their Hamas captors. Israel spent years bolstering its reputation as a professional, capable military force. Now, in the span of almost three months, the Israeli military is facing a pubic relations disaster. Instead of disciplined soldiers commanded by capable officers, the world is seeing an army and air force that is undisciplined, reckless and quick on the trigger. The United States Army was tarred by the My Lai massacre. The Israeli military campaign in Gaza in My Lai on steroids.