Israel Has a Nasty Habit, Part III: “Mass Hannibal” and a False Flag
Leaked video and mainstream news reports finally prove what I have been saying since January: the IDF slaughtered Israeli civilians on October 7.
The Hamas breakout from Gaza on October 7 resulted in hundreds of deaths among Israeli military personnnel and civilians alike. The final death toll from the attack, according to Israel’s own social security records, is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.
All of these deaths were initially blamed on Hamas, although there were at least six other Palestinian armed factions that participated that day.
What has not been widely acknowledged — until now — is the role the Israeli Defense Forces played in the killing on October 7.
On September 6, 2024, ABC News (Australia) published an article exposing the facts surrounding the IDF’s actions on October 7. The article confirms what had already been reported in Israel’s Haaretz news outlet: that the IDF command had issued a “Hannibal Directive” on October 7, ordering the Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships to shoot at all persons and vehicles in the area, and specifically to prevent anyone and anything from “escaping” back to Gaza.
I explain the origins and nature of the Hannibal Directive in my original January 25, 2024 article, “Israel Has a Nasty Habit of Killing Its Own”. The Directive, developed in the 1980’s, orders the IDF to kill any Israeli soldier who is at risk of being taken captive by the enemy.
October 7, however, was the first time that the Hannibal Directive was applied to Israeli civilians as well.
“This was a mass Hannibal”, said one former Israeli officer, Air Force Colonel Nof Erez, in a Haaretz podcast. I had quoted Erez in my own article, so the idea of a “mass Hannibal” was nothing new.
A massacre at a music festival — but by whom?
What the ABC News article revealed, however, was the actual scope of that “mass” killing event by the IDF. Quoting the Israeli news source Yedioth Ahronot, we learn from Israeli air force pilots who were flying that day that dozens of Apache attack helicopters were deployed to the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering” music festival site alone:
“Twenty-eight fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm. We are talking about hundreds of 30-millimetre cannon mortars and Hellfire missiles,” reporter Yoav Zeitoun said.
An Apache attack helicopter is a marvel of military engineering, a death dealing juggernaut capable of delivering barrages of lethal ordnance with relentless rapid-fire.
Each Apache gunship is outfitted with an M230 chain gun that carries 1200 rounds of 30mm cannon shells, each of which has the effect of a “spray grenade”, an armour piercing airburst designed to be used against vehicles, but can also be used against personnel on the ground (the M230 is what one hears and sees in the famous WikiLeak video “Collateral Murder”).
The Israeli Apaches also carry up to 16 Hellfire missiles, capable of destroying tanks and bunkers (these are also used in targeted drone strikes).
The fact that 28 Apaches emptied their armaments at the Supernova music festival — and then reloaded — is almost unimaginable. Especially when one notes that only 50 Palestinian militants were on the ground there that day. Indeed, the Hamas fighters were not even aware of the festival; it was not on their target list, and so only a small contingent split off to attack the festival as a “target of opportunity”.
There were 3000 people at the Supernova festival. A smallish band of Palestinian militants, who had been trained to blend in with the civilian population so as not to stand out as targets for the gunships above, must have been almost impossible to identify.
“The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs: in the investigation it became clear that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to march slowly into or inside the settlements and outposts, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis.”
He adds ominously:
“This deception worked for a considerable time , until the Apache pilots realised that they had to skip all the restrictions.”
The Hannibal Directive took hold — it became a mass killing spree, with the sort of motto, “kill them all and let God sort them out”.
Ynet reported the air force admitting that “it was very difficult to distinguish between terrorists and [Israeli] soldiers or civilians” but that the commander instructed his pilots “to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence” with Gaza anyway.
Firing at least 33,000 rounds of 30mm cannon mortars and 500 Hellfire missiles (before they rearmed), the Apaches must have wreaked havoc on everything that moved on the festival grounds — and every road leading out of the festival.
Some of the aftermath looked like this:
Lightly armed militants carrying AK-47s could not have incinerated vehicles like that.
Israeli officials say 360 Israelis died at the Supernova event. With all that firepower unleashed by the IDF, one has to wonder how many of those Israelis died while the Apache pilots were “emptying their bellies” of ammo “without restrictions”.
The Hannibal Directive in the kibbutzim
The ABC News story confirmed what I had documented in my previous article, namely that the Hannibal Directive was also enforced in the kibbutzim, the small settlement communities in that part of Southern Israel that surrounded the Gaza Strip.
“In Kibbutz Be’eri, where 101 Israeli civilians died, a tank was ordered to fire upon at least one house, after a prolonged firefight with around 40 Hamas gunmen who had been holding 15 hostages inside and outside.”
This incident has become notorious in Israel, according to the article. It was two Israeli survivors who revealed the Israeli military had fired on the houses.
Col. Erez also confirmed in the Haaretz podcast that the IDF used drones and missiles to “explode houses” in the communities.
In another settlement, Kibbutz Nir Oz, the Israeli air force fired at vehicles, killing both militants and their Israeli hostages.
Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher, who wrote the IDF code of ethics, was also interviewed for the ABC story. He condemned the use of the Hannibal Directive and was “dismayed” by the IDF’s actions:
“They acted on very low professional standards,” he said.
Sacrificing Israeli lives — for what?
The ABC story reports that the IDF command issued mass Hannibal Directives in at least three areas on October 7. The IDF was also aware that the hundreds and thousands of Israeli civilians were providing cover for the Hamas fighters, who had been trained to “blend in” with the local population to hide themselves from the watchful eyes of the IDF gunships hovering above. The solution the IDF found was to “shoot anything that moves”.
By enacting the Hannibal procedure, the Israeli command knew they were sentencing hundreds of their own citizens to death.
Why did they do this?
The answer may lie in what happened after October 7.
Building a disturbing narrative
The many deaths that occurred on October 7 provided a perfect foundation for the greatest hasbara project launched by Israel in many years. Hasbara, of course, is the peculiarly Israeli form of propaganda that is designed specifically to “shape the narrative” and influence the perception of Israel in other countries.
Horror stories that were all lies
In retrospect, it is truly impressive how quickly and comprehensively the Israeli hasbara machine kicked into overdrive on October 8. First responders, policemen, IDF officials and dubious “eyewitnesses” all jumped in front of any Western media camera they could find, to relate the most outlandish, horrific and disgusting stories imaginable. They breathlessly told any reporter who would listen about beheaded babies; burned babies; babies hung on clotheslines; babies baked in ovens; babies cut out of their mothers’ wombs; women gang raped, stabbed and slaughtered.
NONE of these stories were true.
The truth is, not one Israeli woman was raped on October 7.
ZAKA takes the prize
Perhaps the most noxious and shameless purveyor of these lies was the ultra-Orthodox religious volunteer organisation called ZAKA, an Israeli version of the Syrian “White Helmets”, who claim to be a privately funded “first responder organisation” to help disaster and war victims.
Yossi Landau, Southern commander for ZAKA, was easily the most prolific in his made-for-foreign-media-consumption stories of alleged Hamas barbarity.
Investigative news site The GrayZone put it succinctly:
“…some of the most obscene fabrications disseminated by Israel’s government and echoed in Washington originated from one man with an especially active imagination: Yossi Landau of ZAKA.
“Moreover, according to Landau, anyone who questions his version of events “should be killed.”
Netanyahu shows his gratitude
Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at the true reason for this tsunami of hasbara when he publicly and officially thanked the members of Zaka for their work around October 7.
Did he thank them for their work in rescuing victims, or identifying the dead? No. He thanked them for their hasbara propaganda “work”:
The prime minister said the work of giving testimony helps fight the war being waged in public opinion, telling them they “have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders.”
Why the false narrative was so important
Indeed, the hasbara “work” done by ZAKA and other Israelis proved incredibly effective. The stories enraged and disgusted the world, and provided much needed distraction from the mass slaughter that Israel was perpetrating in Gaza.
Most importantly, the false stories of alleged Hamas savagery, brutality and cruelty gave cover to foreign governments — particularly in the US — and allowed them to “look away” while Israel ginned up its genocide of the Palestinians.
The GrayZone article recounts one example of the ZAKA stories being used to justify Israeli aggression — and American inaction:
During an October 31 Senate hearing on Israel’s war in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered his rationale for rejecting a ceasefire. Summoning as much emotion as a dour Democratic Party operative could muster, Blinken conjured up a gruesome scene intended to illustrate the savagery of Hamas, and the impossibility of negotiations with such an organisation: “A young boy and girl, 6 and 8 years old, and their parents around the breakfast table,” Blinken intoned. “The father’s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother’s breast cut off, the girl’s foot amputated, the boy’s fingers cut off before they were executed.”
The Secretary of State concluded, “That is what this [Israeli] society is dealing with.”
The story, of course, like Biden’s mention of the “40 beheaded babies”, is totally false. Just one more example of Yossi Landau’s hasbara.
The genocide was always planned
There can be little doubt that the genocide of the Palestinians, which we have witnessed in Gaza for the past 11 months, and which we are now watching unfold also in the West Bank, has been part of the Zionist plan all along. Certainly there is a mountain of evidence that Israel — and especially Netanyahu — never even considered a two state solution.
Rather, as Netanyahu himself has said, the Israelis want one single, ethnically “pure” Jewish state, “from the river to the sea”. Bibi has even shown us what it looks like:
Destroying Gaza was always the imperative
Israel and Netanyahu seized on the October 7 attacks as an excuse to do what they always wanted: to make Gaza unliveable and drive out or kill the Palestinians living there.
This plan was recently exposed in The Times of Israel. Haim Rubinstein, ex-spokesman of the Families Forum, an organisation representing the families of the Israeli hostages, told The Times of a meeting he had with Israeli leaders:
“We left the meeting very disappointed because Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.
“We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.”
In other words, the genocide was the only acceptable solution.
Was Israel willing to sacrifice its own citizens?
I believe the answer is yes. The area around Gaza, the so-called “Gaza Envelope” is populated by kibbutzim, Israeli settlements that are socialist communes:
“Central to the kibbutz are roots in socialist and Marxist ideas about collective living. Early kibbutzim were exercises in radical democracy, said David Leach, author of the book Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel.”
These settlements were founded by the Israeli Labour Party in the early days of the Zionist state, when Zionism was tinged with socialism and even Marxism rather than nationalism.
In fact, US Senator Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a “democratic socialist”, once spent time on an Israeli kibbutz, where he “learned about socialism”.
This strong leftward bent makes the “kibbutzniks” intrinsically opposed to the current far right Likud nationalist party in power under Netanyahu. Indeed, as NPR has noted: “Politics in kibbutzim are associated with the left-wing and peace solutions.”
I suppose then that one must ask one’s self: would Netanyahu and the IDF be so cynical as to sacrifice a bunch of left-wing Marxists and political opponents who want to live in peace with the Palestinians?
Again, I believe the answer is a definite YES.
A false flag? Or a happy opportunity?
Whether Israel planned the attacks of October 7 or deliberately ignored all the warnings and happily let the attacks happen is perhaps moot at this point, as I explained in my article, “9/11 and 10/7 Reveal Disturbing Truths About the US and Israel”.
The fact is, the attacks did happen, and Israel seized on those events and used them to weave a massive false narrative of Hamas barbarity in order to (1) justify their genocide to the outside world and (2) stoke outrage among Israelis so they would support the genocide — and Netanyahu — politically.
And if Israel had to kill a hundreds of its own people in order to make that happen, well, so be it.
#End
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I remember reading in the week after the October 7th attack that the Nova Music Festival was relocated to the spot were the attack happened, that it has been scheduled to be at a different location and then a few days before the attack it was moved to the location where the attack happened. More recently I have read that some of the families of the victims are suing and have obtained documents that show the new location was seen to be dangerous but was approved anyway.
The United Nations report found that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023." https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15621.doc.htm
Let me guess: The UN is AIPAC now, or some other conspiracy bullshit?
Further reading: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/what-we-know-about-the-weaponization-of-sexual-violence-on-october-7th
Hostages who have returned alive from Gaza have reported their sexual assault at the hand of Hamas. You need a name to believe? Amit Sousanna. She is the brave victim of rape by Hamas. Happy now? Or are you just going to call her a liar?