2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7

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Event.png "“Terrorism”"
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7 (Israeli–Palestinian conflict,  mass shooting,  bombing,  cover-up,  mass murder,  genocide?) Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
Hamas incursion.png
Date7 October 2023 - 8 October 2023
LocationIsrael,  Gaza Strip,  West Bank,  Golan Heights,  Lebanon
ParticipantsHamas, Iran, Hezbollah, Mossad?
PerpetratorsHamas, Iran
Deaths2752
Injured (non-fatal)3800
DescriptionHamas attacks Israeli settlements in Southern Israel, mass raping and abducting, which get called an Israeli "9-11" by CCM. The NYT and Al Jazeera claimed the Israeli government knew of the impending attack, ignored warnings, shot some of their own civilians, made up several stories and used the resulting increased death toll to go on a revenge killing spree in the 2023 Israeli invasion of Gaza.

On 7 October 2023 – precisely one day after the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War – a new Israel-Hamas War began.[1] Around 3,000 armed Palestinian militants led by Hamas infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip – seemingly unopposed – and broke through the GazaIsrael barrier into nearby settlements and military installations in Israel, in Operation Al Aqsa Flood.[2]

Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups launched coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Question remain about the serious allegations of foreknowledge, usage of the Hannibal directive and manipulation of the mass panic and footage of mass abductions to gain international support for the subsequent invasion of Gaza.[3]

Official Narrative

Full article: Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Footage of CCTV

At least 3,000 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip as a large number of Hamas militants broke through the border and entered Israel, killing at least 900 Israelis and prompting Israel's government to declare a state of emergency. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel "is at war" in a national address following the beginning of the attacks. Palestinian militants who infiltrated Israel went into several kibbutzim as well as the city of Sderot.

After a surprise hang-glider and land assault on Israeli settlements, military bases and a music festival, over 1000 people died on the 7th of October by the hand of Hamas fighters. Israeli forces claim that Hamas gunmen killed more than 100 people in the kibbutz of Be'eri and a similar number in the Kfar Aza kibbutz.[4] By 11 November 2023, the death toll in Gaza had reportedly exceeded 11,000 Palestinians[5] whilst the Israelis revised downward their death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel to around 1,200 from a previous government estimate of 1,400.[6]

Israeli military prisoners-of-war and civilians, including children[7], had been taken hostage[8] by Palestinian militants; several of these hostages have reportedly since been taken to the Gaza Strip. Numerous cases of violence against Israeli civilians have occurred since the beginning of the Hamas offensive, including a massacre at a music festival in Re'im that killed at least 260.[9] Hamas called it "Operation Al Aqsa Flood". In response, the IDF launched Operation Iron Sword, where it called up 300,000 reservists and started a massive assault on Gaza. On the northern border with Lebanon, minor exchanges of fire continued.[10]

IDF officials reported that the bodies of 1,500 Hamas soldiers had been recovered from Israeli territory.[11]. Apparently not many prisoners were taken, with pictures showing desecration of their corpses.

Hamas representative in Lebanon Ahmad Abd Al-Hadi said in an October 12, 2023 show on NBN TV (Lebanon) that the goal of its “strategic deception” was to make Israel “fall asleep for a while, making it believe that Gaza was not going to do anything.” He said that this is the reason that Hamas did not join the August 2022 and May 2023 rounds of fighting between Gaza and Israel. Abd Al-Hadi added that Hamas and other factions had managed attacks against Israel in the West Bank from Gaza in order to move Israel’s focus from Gaza to there. Later in the interview, he said that in this operation Hamas has made several steps forward in its enterprise to liberate Palestine and destroy Israel. Abd Al-Hadi stated that another goal of the operation was to land a blow to the normalisation of relations between Israel and several Arab countries - Memri TV

Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, in an audio message, declared the operation was "to end the last occupation on Earth".[12] Shortly thereafter, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh made a similar announcement in a televised address.[13]

Concerns

Preparation

In the months preceding the attack, Hamas publicly released videos of its militants preparing to attack Israel. A video released in December 2022 showed Hamas training to take hostages, while another video showed Hamas practicing paragliding.[14] On 12 September, Hamas posted a video of its fighters training to blast through the border.[15]

For two years, Hamas used hardwired phone lines within Gaza's tunnel network, nicknamed the "Gaza metro", to covertly communicate, evade Israeli intelligence, and plan Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Israel claimed shortly after the attack. [16] After the attack, the IDF said that Hamas had extensively studied the military bases and settlements near the border.[17]

Foreknowledge

“Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan.

Hamas had "decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope," analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division. But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet. On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing.

The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times. The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out. The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off.

“In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.”
Ronen Bergman,  Adam Goldman (2023)  [18]

By December 2023 reports from the NYT[19] and Haaretz emerged,[20] that the Israeli IDF and Unit 8200 knew of the exact details of the planned incursion, but deemed the plan "not realistic", raising questions over the official narrative of 10-7 being a Palestinian "surprise attack".[21]

Genocide

Shin Bet interrogation of Hamas terrorists who invaded on October 7

Several international law scholars - including former Attorney General of Canada Irwin Cotler and former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo - called Hamas' assault genocide. In the first week, many self-recorded acts of mutilation and sexual assault were broadcast by Hamas and praised and re-broadcast by Muslims on social media. Israeli police said dozens of women and some men were raped[22][23], highlighting the Hamas founding charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, denounced Zionism and Judaism, and, according to certain researchers according to Rutgers, implies a call for the genocide of Jews (before a 2017 revision that advocated for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, what would include the West Bank region and East Jerusalem).[24]

Several Hamas soldiers confiscated victims' phones to livestream their deaths on social media while they posted messages or media on victims' social media accounts and even went as far as calling relatives to taunt them. Ghazi Hamad, senior Hamas official, promised in a late October 2023 interview to launch "a second, a third, a fourth" attack until the country is "annihilated," asserting, "We are victims - everything we do is justified".[25]

Al Jazeera's hour-long video "October 7" reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from Gaza into Israel. But the investigation also found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. There were a number of incidents where the police and IDF appear to have killed Israeli citizens.

Forensic examinations on victims on the attacks of 7th October showed signs of sexual abuse, mutilations, broken limbs, and broken pelvises, with reports of released hostages and 1,500 testimonies supporting the rape reports. The NYT also shared testimonies of sexual violence during hostages their time in Gaza City. Following the capture of Hamas soldiers, one came on the record to confess he got permission to "rape corpses", and given explicit instructions to kill everyone they encountered, including beheading victims and cutting off their legs. The plan, as described in the videos, involved moving from home to home, from room to room, throwing grenades, and killing everyone, including women and children. In one video a person whose face is blurred says that gunmen were ordered to "crush victims' heads, sever limbs, and cut off their legs".[26][27] [28][29]

Hannibal Directive

The Israeli forces used the Hannibal Directive, which states that kidnappings "must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces," and also allows for no consideration to be taken to save friendly civilians.

Yasmin Porat, a survivor from the Kibbutz Be’eri, told Israeli radio that Israeli security forces "undoubtedly" killed a large number of their own civilians following the Hamas assault on 7 October. Porat stated that the Palestinian fighters – who she says treated her and the other Israeli civilians "humanely" – intended "kidnap us to Gaza. Not to murder us"..."After we were there for two hours with the abductors, the police arrive. A gun battle takes place that our police started....They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. Because there was very, very heavy crossfire."[30]

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published an interview with a man called Tuval who lived in Kibbutz Be’eri, but who was away on 7 October. Tuval’s partner was however killed in the events. Haaretz reported: "According to him [Tuval], only on Monday night and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages – did the IDF [Israeli army] complete the takeover of the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble."[31] [32][33]

Israeli helicopter pilots told how they focused on vehicles streaming back into Gaza from the Nova electronic music festival and nearby kibbutzes, attacking cars with knowledge that Israeli captives could be inside. One Apache pilot reflected on the difficult dilemma of whether to shoot at people and cars returning to Gaza. He knew that many of those vehicles may have contained Israeli captives. But he chose to open fire anyway. In 4 hours, 300 cars were targeted.[34]

Re'im music festival

The official narrative holds that Hamas massacred 260 civilians, injured a greater number, and took an unknown number of hostages at the "Supernova Sukkot Gathering", an open-air psychedelic trance music festival.[35] The event was held near a Gaza Regiment military base. The concert was not meant to be held so close to the base and the location of the event was moved just two nights before. These circumstances should normally have led to a long list of security precautions in a super-militarized state such as Israel. Witness reports from survivors indicate most of the death civilians died in crossfire, after an IDF roadblock hindered the participants from escaping[36].

Foreknowledge by Netanyahu

Did Israel's security agencies underestimate Egypt's repeated warnings about a potential strike by Hamas? A senior Egyptian intelligence officer has made a startling revelation. He claims, Jerusalem ignored multiple warnings on potential hamas strike - Gravitas

A month after the attack, prime minister Netanyahu removed the following tweet very quickly after being pressued by intelligence agencies and the IDF, hinting at internal deep political interference. The BBC mentioned "the post on X unleashed a wave of furious reactions by high-ranking Israeli security officials, exposing deep internal divisions".[37]

“Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas. On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement".”
Benjamin Netanyahu (October 2023)  [38]

Foreknowledge on the stock market

In December 2023, Haaretz revealed that unnamed people who "made giant gambles against Israel on the markets in Tel Aviv and Wall Street days before Hamas’ attack made billions."[39]


Intelligence Failure?

In 2021, Israel completed a sensor-equipped underground wall on its side of Gaza, a countermeasure developed after Hamas used tunnels to repel its troops during a 2014 invasion of the besieged Palestinian territory. The project also includes an above-ground fence, a naval barrier, radar systems and command and control rooms. The barrier includes hundreds of cameras, radar and other sensors, and spans 65km (40 miles). 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel were used in its construction, which took three-and-a-half years to complete.[40] Israeli officials just argued that intelligence failed because of Sabbath and a Jewish holiday on top of that.[41]

Israeli journalist Efrat Fenigson, who served in Israel's intelligence forces, said "No military involvement, no police, no arms on the ground for hours and hours. This is something that is non-typical and unusual for Israel defence forces...[The fact that the border was breached in 15 places] is completely ridiculous because normally with one breach of the fence, the whole army is triggered and things start moving immediately. Things start moving immediately and here there was nothing for hours."[42][43]

Exploiting Mass Shock

A good example of how this event has played into PM Netanyahu's hand; Al Jazeera wrote; The Israeli military is bombarding Gaza, Hamas is launching more rockets and the death toll on both sides of the divide is rising. Splashed across Israeli media headlines is ‘Israel at War’ with many outlets reporting events as they happen, while some op-eds – and even high profile figures – have been using rhetoric criticised as dangerous and inflammatory.
Full article: 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza

On 20 March 2024, Al Jazeera Investigations released an hour-long video entitled "October 7" which found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape. The video revealed that claims by the Israel Defence Force that it found 8 burned babies at a house in Kibbutz Be’eri were entirely untrue. There were no babies in the house and the 12 civilians inside were killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the house.

This could prove to be a tactic by Israel to induce mass panic on social media, as the first few weeks had CCM replaying the abductions and running Israeli people at the music festival, helping the public opinion in the resulting Israeli invasion of Gaza.[44]


 

Known Participants

All 4 of the participants already have pages here:

ParticipantDescription
Hamas"Terrorists" according to the West, largely founded, financed and brought to power by Israel, Hamas has led Palestine into becoming an enemy image to the western world since 2006.
HezbollahPolitical Islamic party, and army fighting many wars in the Middle East, linked to possible CIA drug trafficking.
IranIran possesses the 4th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Mossad"Mossad" (Hebrew for Institute) is an abbreviation for ha-Mossad le-Modiin ule-Tafkidim Meyuhadim (Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks). It is the Israeli State Agency with overall responsible for external intelligence and covert operations.
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References

  1. "UNRWA Situation Report #1 on the Situation in the Gaza Strip"
  2. "If this is Israel’s 9/11, it must not make same mistakes the US did"
  3. See "Foreknowledge"
  4. "There is nothing surprising about Hamas’s operation"
  5. "US voices concern over killing of Palestinians as Gaza death toll tops 11,000"
  6. "Israel revises Hamas attack death toll to 'around 1,200'"
  7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbez-juyHbQ
  8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y9fHUOhTMY
  9. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/07/naked-israeli-woman-paraded-jeering-hamas-fighters/
  10. "Death toll in Israel surges above 1,200, while Gaza officials report 900 people killed"
  11. "1,500 bodies of Hamas militants recovered from Israeli territory, officials say"
  12. {https://www.arabnews.com/node/2387276/middle-east
  13. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-israel-rockets-attack-hamas-1.6990209
  14. Murphy, Paul P.; John, Tara; Swails, Brent; Liebermann, Oren (13 October 2023). "Hamas militants trained for its deadly attack in plain sight and less than a mile from Israel's heavily fortified border". CNN. Archived from the original on 13 October 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2023.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
  15. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/hamas-practised-in-plain-sight-posting-video-of-mock-attack-weeks-before-border-breach-1.6599556%7Curl-status=live}}
  16. https://web.archive.org/web/20231026051800/https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/24/politics/}
  17. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/21/hamas-documents-plans-israel-attack/
  18. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html NYT
  19. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html
  20. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-20/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-women-soldiers-who-warned-of-a-pending-hamas-attack-and-were-ignored/0000018b-ed76-d4f0-affb-eff740150000
  21. "10-7 was a staged, military operation to manufacture consent for a disproportionate military response"
  22. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html
  23. https://web.archive.org/web/20231128081253/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/25/israel-hamas-rape-sexual-violence/
  24. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-16/ty-article/hamas-deadly-rampage-constitutes-crime-of-genocide-hundreds-of-legal-experts-say/0000018b-37d1-d450-a3af-7fddda070000
  25. https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/hamas-october-7-attack-repeat-israel-annihilated-ghazi-hamad/
  26. https://apnews.com/article/biden-hamas-rape-israel-sexual-violence-155Jq5pu3245d4418M19YnRvau7Rc14hVB
  27. https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/
  28. https://web.archive.org/web/20231029160226/
  29. https://www.timesofisrael.com/kill-behead-rape-interrogated-hamas-members-detail-atrocities-against-civilians/
  30. https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861
  31. https://archive.md/JtyES#selection-873.0-873.346
  32. https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861
  33. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/a-growing-number-of-reports-indicate-israeli-forces-responsible-for-israeli-civilian-and-military-deaths-following-october-7-attack/
  34. https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b111niukzt
  35. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67047034
  36. https://t.me/propandco/27
  37. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-hostages-palestine-hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-blames-security-agencies/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication
  38. Benjamin Netanyahu
  39. https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1731723790680530996
  40. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/7/israel-announces-completion-of-underground-gaza-border-barrier
  41. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/09/1204577965/israel-intelligence-security-hamas-gaza
  42. https://odysee.com/@EarthNewspaper:e/This-Surprise-Attack-Seems-Like-A-Planned-Operation-On-All-Fronts-by-Efrat-Fenigson:7
  43. https://twitter.com/wideawake_media/status/1712765108907135217
  44. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0atzea-mPY "October 7 | Al Jazeera Investigations"}