Combatting Israel’s Lies About October 7
4 January 2024 by Larry Johnson 32 Comments
My brother-in-law, a good man, is one of the victims of the Israeli propaganda campaign in the aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli military bases and kibbutzim located outside the wall separating Israelis from the Palestinians in Gaza. Shocked and surprised by the success of the Hamas attack, the Government of Israel launched a massive, successful propaganda campaign that claimed Hamas had murdered 40 children, beheaded some of them, baked a baby in an oven and wantonly raped the alluring Israeli women. I call it a “success” because it infuriated people in the United States and Europe and rallied them to Israel’s side.
Only one little problem — it was a lie. My brother-in-law, who is a well-educated and widely read man, was taken in by it. Here is a portion of his initial message to me:
They did attack and destroy Israeli military positions while soldiers were asleep; shame on the soldiers. I agree. Send me the report that says they did not rape Israeli females. Young women being released now are relating stories of sexual abuse. Are you discounting them? Physicians have noted the truthfulness of these claims.
Are you saying the videos that have been released to the media (much of which haven’t been released to the public) and have been reported.. are false? You’re implying virtually 100% of the media who has seen the videos are lying. They include beheadings, burnings, disembowlings, etc. I doubt the IDF is responsible.
Let me ask this in a different way. What part of all of this October 7 issue do you feel is justified? Where are your sympathies? There weren’t 1400 military deaths. The vast majority were youngsters at a party. You cannot convince anyone that’s collateral. The IDF didn’t do that. 1400 deaths didn’t happen from a few tanks blowing holes in safe houses. You know that. And that number didn’t happen from knocking out some sentries at the lookout stations either.
I know that some of my readers have had similar exchanges with their relatives. Here is what I did — I sent him the following video.
As I said, my brother-in-law is a smart man. He is a man of science, not emotion. Here is his response.
Very good. I’ll have to add Blumenthal to my reading list.
That is why I love him. He has integrity when it comes to facts. Credit goes to Max Blumenthal and his team at GrayZone. Their report in early December was an irrefutable revelation of Israel’s fabrication.
Despite the presence of multiple potential witnesses inside Beeri before ZAKA arrived to collect dead bodies, independent testimony corroborating Landau’s claim has yet to surface. Further, there are no recorded deaths of siblings around the age of 6 to 8 in Beeri on October 7. Any record of a young child killed in the manner Landau described is similarly nonexistent, as are photos of the murdered family he described. In fact, the only siblings anywhere close to this age range who died in the community on that day—12-year-old twins Liel and Yanai Hetrzroni—were killed by Israeli tank shelling.
Landau’s story – and by extension, Blinken’s testimony before the Senate – therefore appears to have been spun out of whole cloth; a cynical fabrication intended to dramatize the supposed barbarism of Hamas in order to widen the political space for Israel’s rampage in the Gaza Strip. As this investigation will demonstrate, Landau’s tale was merely one of many tall tales concocted by a small circle of dubious characters who have managed to shape the official narrative of October 7 in Western media.
Though Israeli officials played a central role in Tel Aviv’s misinformation campaign surrounding the events of October 7— falsely claiming, for instance, that the bodies of dead Jewish babies were found dangling from a laundry line in one kibbutz—the most inflammatory allegations have emerged from a collection of ultra-Orthodox volunteer organizations such as ZAKA. Though ZAKA specializes “in body collection and disposal,” the group has no coronary credentials and is staffed by droves of poorly trained volunteers.
Then there is this admission by the clueless Lt. Col. Golan Vach. He says he saw one headless baby in the house that his tanks fired on. I say clueless because he is unwilling to acknowledge the fact that it was his tanks, not Hamas, that killed all of the people and decapitated the baby in that house.
As Max said at the start of his video interview above, he is a Jew. So he is not some anti-semitic hater. He is a believer in the laws and beliefs that undergird Judaism. He is a man in search of the truth. He is not alone. I know several devout Jews who are shocked and outraged by the behavior of the Zionists that populate Netanyahu’s Government. I believe in holding people accountable to the same standard. It is wrong to demonize all Palestinians for the actions of Hamas or PIJ. Similarly and it is wrong to demonize all Jews for the actions of the Government of Bibi Netanyahu.
The GrayZone reported today that the Washington Post quietly removed a false claim attributed to Israel’s Defense Minister in a November 12th “exclusive”:
November 12 and promoted as a Washington Post “exclusive,” Gallant is quoted as telling the outlet: “We know from interrogations that Hamas came in with detailed plans of their attack, including which commander should rape which soldiers in different places.”
Turns out Gallant was unwilling to stand behind his claim and the Washington Post issued this “correction”:
“A previous version of this article included a quote from Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that was not authorized for publication. The quote has been removed.”
Odd language. It certainly suggests he said it but probably realized that it was a lie that would be easily exposed.
Blumenthal also reported the following:
Now, in what Israeli media describes as the “largest claim ever filed in Israel against a state body for negligence,” a firm representing 42 survivors is seeking nearly $55 million in damages from the Israeli army, intelligence, and police for failing to prevent the October 7 attack and neglecting to notify event organizers of the clashes.
“All that the defendants had to do was to call the organizers responsible [for the party] to disperse the festival in light of the warnings that were received,” the claim states. It concludes: “It is incomprehensible that the defendants did not order the immediate dispersal of the festival.”
This only adds to the political woes piling up on Netanyahu. If this case is allowed to go to trial — a big if in my view — it will be accompanied by evidence that will show that a large number of Israeli casualties on October 7 were inflicted by the Israeli military and not Hamas. Looks like Netanyahu and his crew will learn the truth discovered by Richard Nixon — i.e. that it is not the original crime, it is the cover up that ends you.