The Grayzone’s editor Max Blumenthal, in an article posted on Oct. 27, puts new light on both the Israeli casualties of Oct. 7 and the IDF strategy for Gaza. Blumenthal cites numerous reports and testimonies from Israel indicating that a significant portion of the 1,400 Israelis who died on Oct. 7 were actually killed by IDF fire, mainly from tanks and Apache helicopters, not by Hamas militants who had attacked and occupied more than 20 Israeli settlements after breaking out of Gaza that morning.
“These reports indicate that orders came down from the military’s high command to attack homes and other areas inside Israel, even at the cost of many Israeli lives,” Blumenthal writes. IDF tanks and Apache helicopters shelled many homes of Israelis to kill Hamas militants despite knowing that hostages were also inside those homes. There were also cases where the IDF had no intelligence as to what was going on and was unable to distinguish between Hamas militants and Israeli civilians, and yet determined to “empty the belly” of their war machines. In the process, Blumenthal debunks many Israeli claims of atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas.
Blumenthal suggests that the source of this Israeli behavior is something killed the Hannibal Directive, a secret IDF order dating back to 1986 which calls for the application of massive firepower in response to the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by armed Palestinian militants, even at the risk of killing the hostage. The last confirmed application of the Hannibal Directive took place on August 1, 2014 in Rafah, Gaza, when Hamas fighters captured an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin, prompting the military to unleash more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area, killing him along with more than 100 Palestinian civilians.
This could bode ill for the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas into Gaza on Oct. 7. Blumenthal concludes his report with the following account:
“Whether or not Israel is intentionally killing its captive citizens in Gaza, it has proven strangely allergic to their immediate release. On Oct. 22, after refusing an offer from Hamas to release 50 hostages in exchange for fuel, Israel rejected an offer from Hamas to free Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old Israeli peace activist, and her 79-year-old friend, Nurit Cooper. When Israel agreed to their release a day later, video showed Liftshitz clasping hands with a Hamas militant and intoning ‘Shalom’ to him as he escorted her out of Gaza. During a press conference that day, she recounted the humane treatment she received from her captors.
“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.’
“The Israeli military was no less displeased by her sudden freedom. As the Times of Israel reported, ‘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.’”
