Group’s denial of Israeli claims and description of mass killing of Israelis by IDF fits with evidence and witness testimonies
Hamas, the government of Gaza and resistance group – designated terrorists by the UK, US and other western governments – has issued a statement about the background and events of its 7 October raid into Israel, countering the ‘atrocity propaganda’ that Israel has used to try to justify its genocide and other war crimes against Palestinian civilians, including tens of thousands of children and women murdered and around double the number wounded and maimed.
The statement has been ignored by the UK and other so-called ‘mainstream’ media. It includes the historical and political background of Israel’s decades-long apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people, a detailed account of its aims and actions on the day targeting military personnel and installations, refutation of Israeli claims – and a call for a full and transparent international investigation – along with a summary of its own political aims.
On the events of 7 October, it reminds readers of the testimonies of survivors and hostages about the civil treatment they received from Hamas fighters and of the now common knowledge – of course ignored by the UK media, but not by their Israeli counterparts – of the ‘immense’ (the IDF’s own description) ‘friendly fire’ deaths inflicted on Israeli citizens by Israeli tanks, helicopters and troops, as well as informing readers of the deaths of sixty Israeli hostages to IDF bombs and shells in Gaza.
The briefing, which was forwarded to Skwawkbox from renowned Palestinian academic Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, who, after a long career in the US, now teaches at Bethlehem University and runs the Palestinian Museum of Natural History, reads:
In light of the Israeli fabricated accusations and allegations over Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 and its repercussions, we in the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas clarify
the following:
- Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 targeted the Israeli military sites, and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to pressure on the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails through a prisoners exchange
deal. Therefore, the operation focused on destroying the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, the Israeli military sites stationed near the Israeli settlements around Gaza.- Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite
the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons. In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidently and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.
Since its establishment in 1987, the Hamas Movement committed itself to avoiding harm to civilians. After Zionist criminal Baruch Goldstein in 1994 committed a massacre against Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in occupied Hebron City, the Hamas Movement announced an initiative to avoid civilians the brunt of fighting by all parties, but the Israeli occupation rejected it and even did not give any comment on it. The Hamas Movement also repeated such calls several times, but received by a deaf ear from the Israeli occupation which continued its deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians.- Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.
As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza, and sought from the earliest days of the aggression to release them, and that’s what happened during the week-long humanitarian truce where those civilians were released in exchange of releasing Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails.- What the Israeli occupation promoted of allegations that the Al-Qassam Brigades on Oct. 7 were targeting Israeli civilians are nothing but complete lies and fabrications. The source of these allegations is the Israeli official narrative and no independent source proved any of them. It is a well-known fact that the Israeli official narrative had always sought to demonize the Palestinian resistance, while also legalizing its brutal aggression on Gaza.
Here are some details that go against the Israeli allegations:
♦ Video clips taken on that day – Oct. 7 – along with the testimonies by Israelis themselves that were released later showed that the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.
♦ It has also been firmly refuted the lie of the “40 beheaded babies” by the Palestinian fighters, and even Israeli sources denied this lie. Many of the western media agencies unfortunately adopted this allegation and promoted it.
♦ The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women
was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement. A report by the Mondoweiss news website on Dec. 1, 2023, among others, said there is lack of any evidence of “mass rape” allegedly perpetrated by Hamas members on Oct. 7 and that Israel used such allegation “to fuel the genocide in Gaza.”
♦ According to two reports by the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Oct. 10 and the Haaretz newspaper on Nov. 18, many Israeli civilians were killed by an Israeli military helicopter especially those who were in the Nova music festival near Gaza where 364 Israeli civilians were killed. The two reports said the Hamas fighters reached the area of the festival without any prior knowledge of the festival, where the Israeli helicopter opened fire on both the Hamas fighters and the participants in the festival. The Yedioth Ahronoth also said the Israeli army, to prevent further infiltrations from Gaza and to prevent any Israelis being arrested by the Palestinian fighters, struck over 300 targets in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip.
♦ Other Israeli testimonies confirmed that the Israeli army raids and soldiers’ operations killed many Israeli captives and their captors. The Israeli occupation army bombed the houses in the Israeli settlements where Palestinian fighters and Israelis were inside in a clear application of the Israeli army notorious “Hannibal Directive” which clearly says that “better a dead civilian hostage or soldier than taken alive” to avoid engaging in a prisoners swap with the Palestinian resistance.
♦ Furthermore, the occupation authorities revised the number of their killed soldiers and civilians from 1,400 to 1,200, after finding that 200-burnt corpses had belonged to the Palestinian fighters who were killed and mixed with Israeli corpses. This means that the one who killed the fighters is the one who killed the Israelis, knowing that only the Israeli army possesses military planes that killed, burned and destroyed Israeli areas on Oct. 7.
♦ The Israeli heavy aerial raids across Gaza that led to the death of nearly 60 Israeli captives also prove that the Israeli occupation does not care about the life of their captives in Gaza.- It is also a matter of fact that a number of Israeli settlers in settlements around Gaza were armed, and clashed with Palestinian fighters on Oct. 7. Those settlers were registered as civilians while the fact is they were armed men fighting alongside the Israeli army.
- When speaking about Israeli civilians, it must be known that conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of 18 – males who served 32 months of military service and females who served 24 months – where all can carry and use arms. This is based on the Israeli security theory of an “armed people” which turned the Israeli entity into “an army with a country attached.”
- The brutal killing of civilians is a systematic approach of the Israeli entity, and one of the means to humiliate the Palestinian people. The mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza is a clear evidence of such approach.
- The Al Jazeera news channel said in a documentary that in one month of the Israeli
aggression on Gaza, the daily average killing of Palestinian children in Gaza was 136, while the average of children killing in Ukraine – in the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war – was one child every day.- Those who defend the Israeli aggression do not look at the events in an objective manner but rather go to justify the Israeli mass killing of Palestinians by saying there would be casualties among civilians when attacking the Hamas fighters. However, they would not use such assumption when it comes to the Al-Aqsa Flood event on Oct. 7.
- We are confident that any fair and independent inquiries will prove the truth of our
narrative and will prove the scale of lies and misleading information in the Israeli side. This also includes the Israeli allegations regarding the hospitals in Gaza that the Palestinian resistance used them as command centers; an allegation that was not proven and was refuted by reports of many western press agencies.
The document is far more in accord with the available evidence than the claims of the Israeli regime – but it is Israel’s claims that are being amplified by western media, including the Guardian and the New York Times, despite the evidence. More will be published in the next day or so.
Mr Centofanti told Skwawkbox:
There has been a good deal of coverage by other news outlets including the Israeli media of evidence pointing to a large number of Israelis having been killed by their own forces on Oct 7th. Many of the claims of atrocities committed by Hamas originally made by Israel, such as those involving babies beheaded or baked in ovens have been dropped or debunked.
According to the journalist Jonathan Cook, the Israeli military itself has conceded that it had killed its own civilians “in immense and complex quantity” but that “it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents”. A lot of evidence points to the IDF’s indiscriminate use of tanks and helicopter gunships as the cause of many deaths. The fact that Israel revised its original figure of 1400 Israelis killed down to 1200 and then again to 1140 suggests that it was not sure who its own forces had killed. Its claims of systematic rape and torture have also been questioned as they are based on partisan and unreliable witnesses who have changed their stories several times.
We also know that the IDF have a strategy of using overwhelming and disproportionate force. And from the way they killed their own three hostages waving white flags that they are trigger-happy. Also, on Oct 7th they will have been in a state of panic. Finally, that the IDF have a rule called ‘Hannibal’ which they employ to prevent hostages being taken even if it means killing them.
All of this suggests that the version of events we have been given requires verification. Has The Guardian checked its sources to verify all the claims of atrocities made by Israel. If not, why does it routinely repeat the Israeli narrative without clarifying the source (Israel). For example, The Guardian routinely refers to what happened on Oct 7 as “Hamas’s atrocity against Israel”. This suggests that The Guardian is satisfied that all the claims made by Israel are correct. But if questions are being raised about the truth about what happened on Oct 7 even in the Israeli media, why has The Guardian not covered this story?
Not doing so is highly irresponsible and dangerous because it gives Israel continued moral justification and makes it complicit in prolonging the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.
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Posted that info a few days back, turning the statement into an image.
There’s an even more detailed account that looks at the numbers that Israel originally used ~ as Hamas-caused deaths, counting what has become known about reported incidents, NONE OF WHICH has found its way into the UK’s MSM. It appears that more than half were killed by the IOF’s panicked responsed. Especially all the incinerated cars alonf with their occupants, plus kibbutz houses burnt by Israeli tank shells, killing all those inside, Hamas fighters and kibbutzim members.
Chance to post. Elite Israeli regiment refuse to renew actions in Gaza. Wouldn’t have tried that ruse with our RSM.
Jonathan Cook gives a multiple number of links in his article here: “Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October” [including to the original article, in Hebrew; since translated into English and included in full at the end of the attached] : “The Black Time, by Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun, published by Yedioth Ahronoth’s weekend supplement 7 Days, 12 January 2024; translation by Dena Shunra for The Electronic Intifada, based on the print edition.”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october
This is another article which goes through what happened on October 7th. One of the other VERY INFORMATIVE ones that I have seen [and, believe me, I’ve read a few]: https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/18526
“How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival”
*New evidence points to Israeli security forces, not Hamas, for causing the most fatalities at the music festival – civilian deaths that were then utilized to justify Tel Aviv’s Gaza genocide.* William Van Wagenen. The Cradel
It is good that Skwawkbox has published the Hamas statement.
Much of the information in the statement has been known for some time and it has even been published in Israel – Even though the UK MSM won’t touch it.
I have little hope that the UK MSM will publish the Hamas statement and that UK MSM will continue to be a propaganda mouthpiece for the Israeli government.
The domination of our politics and our media by the Zionist lobby is a disgrace.
We must not forget that Israel is the Middle East proxy for USA and its role is to act as USA’s policeman on the front-line for US interests in the oil-rich area.
We must remember Israel’s 75 years as an Apartheid, terrorist state which has progressively ethnic-cleansed Palestinians from their homes and their land.
We should salute the bravery of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi for standing with Gaza against Israel’s onslaught.
All three designated as “terrorist” entities by USA
The real “terrorist” state is Israel.
The sponsor and enabler of Israel’s terrorism is USA, who provides the billions of US $ in armaments and support, without which Israel would not exist.
The reasons for UK/USA bombing of Yemen become clear.
It is the USA saying to the region – “We’re the boss here”
No surprise then !
I think just about everyone who follows Skwawkbox or any other left-wing or independent news sites will have concluded months ago that BN and Co had advanced knowledge of the attack on October 7th and, as such, decided to let it go ahead, and did so for a variety of reasons, not least that they could then justify the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the mass destruction of Gaza. Anyway, here’s a section from the wikipedia entry for the October 7th attack headlined Advance Israeli Knowledge:
According to The New York Times, Israeli officials had obtained detailed attack plans more than a year before the attack. The document described operational plans and targets, including the size and location of Israeli forces, and raised questions in Israel about how Hamas learned these details. The document provided a plan that included a large-scale rocket assault before an invasion, drones to knock out the surveillance cameras and automated guns that Israel has stationed along the border, and gunmen invading Israel, including with paragliders. The Times reported, “Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision.” According to The Times, the document was widely circulated among Israeli military and intelligence leadership, who largely dismissed the plan as beyond Hamas’s capabilities, though it was unclear whether the political leadership was informed. In July 2023, a member of the Israeli signals intelligence unit alerted her superiors that Hamas was conducting preparations for the assault, saying, “I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary”. An Israeli colonel ignored her concerns.[82]
According to Haaretz, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, and IDF military commanders discussed a possible threat to the Nova music festival near kibbutz Re’im just hours before the attack, but the festival’s organizers were not warned.[83][84]
According to a BBC investigation, surveillance reports suggested that Hamas was planning a significant operation against Israel, but senior IDF officers repeatedly ignored the warnings.[85]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel
The Sunday Times article cited in the wikipedia entry (in the section that I copied and pasted above) is behind a paywall, but I managed to ‘grab’ the following when I refreshed the page:
MIDDLE EAST CRISIS
Nova festival: Israel ‘withheld warnings’ about Hamas massacre
Domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet allegedly knew of threat but did not inform festival organisers
George Grylls, Tel Aviv
Wednesday December 06 2023, 1.30pm, The Times
No warnings about the imminent attacks were passed on to the organisers of the Nova festival, where 360 people died and a further 40 were taken hostage
I should add that this is news to me – ie that Shin Bet knew of the threat but didn’t warn the festival organisers. It’s one thing having absolutely no doubt whatsoever that BN et al knew in advance etc, but it’s entirely another matter when there’s actual proof that they did. I wonder if this is what Ebenezer was alluding to a couple of days ago in a reply to me.
I’ve no idea what it then goes on to say in the ST article, but the fact that they even covered it is quite astonishing. But did any of the other MSM cover it given that they must have been aware of both the Haaretz article, and the ST article. I’ll do a search a bit later, but I can only assume that most of the MSM kept schtum about it:
Haaretz is also behind a paywall of course, but here’s what is visable:
‘This Massacre Should Have Been Prevented’ | Despite Israeli Intelligence Warnings About a Hamas Attack, the Army Didn’t Evacuate the Nova Festival
Top defense officials held urgent consultations the night before October 7 about a possible Hamas attack. But no one in the IDF notified the the Nova festival organizers or the party-goers, hundreds of whom were mown down – and for nine hours, no one came to save them
Yaniv Kubovich
Dec 5, 2023
Hours before Hamas’ October 7 terror attack, Israel’s security forces had enough warning signs to prepare – at least partially – for the possibility that terrorists would seek to infiltrate from Gaza into Israel.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-05/ty-article/.premium/despite-intel-warnings-about-a-hamas-attack-the-army-didnt-evacuate-the-nova-festival/0000018c-3993-dc03-a9ec-3dfb2cda0000
In the wikipedia entry for the October 7th attack (in the section I posted above) it references a BBC article headlined ‘They were Israel’s ‘eyes on the border’ – but their Hamas warnings went unheard’, in which it says the following:
They are known as Israel’s eyes on the Gaza border.
For years, units of young female conscripts had one job here. It was to sit in surveillance bases for hours, looking for signs of anything suspicious.
In the months leading up to the 7 October attacks by Hamas, they did begin to see things: practice raids, mock hostage-taking, and farmers behaving strangely on the other side of the fence.
Noa, not her real name, says they would pass information about what they were seeing to intelligence and higher-ranking officers, but were powerless to do more. “We were just the eyes,” she says.
It was clear to some of these women that Hamas was planning something big – that there was, in Noa’s words, a “balloon that was going to burst”.
The article isn’t actually dated, but it says that it’s been up for six days, so I assume it was published on January 15th. Anyway, as many readers probably know, JVL reposted a Haaretz article on November 21st in relation to this – ie two months or so prior to the BBC article. But never-the-less, it’s good to see the BBC have now covered it, and they actually expand on the Haaretz article, and it continues:
The BBC has now spoken to these young women about the escalation in suspicious activity they observed, the reports they filed, and what they saw as a lack of response from senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers.
We have also seen WhatsApp messages the women sent in the months before 7 October, talking about incidents at the border. To some of them it became a dark joke: who would be on duty when the inevitable attack came?
These women were not the only ones raising the alarm, and as more testimony is gathered, anger at the Israeli state – and questions over its response – are mounting.
Several watchwomen who did fear a major attack was coming have told the BBC they felt their concerns were not being listened to…..
Retired IDF Maj Gen Eitan Dangot says the tatzpitaniyot play a major role in “pushing the button that says something is wrong”, and that concerns they raise with a commander should be passed up the chain “to create an intelligence picture”.
He says the look-outs provide key “pieces of the puzzle” in understanding any threats.
In the months leading up to the Hamas attacks, senior Israeli officials gave public statements suggesting that the threat posed by Hamas had been contained.
But there were many signs along the border that something was very wrong.
It’s a really long article, and I doubt I’ve posted even a quarter of it, but it’s well worth taking the time to read it. Here’s another bit from further on in the article:
When she noticed the vans on the border, Roni says the protocol was to alert her commander and then to keep watching until the vehicles were no longer in her section. She would then file it in a computer system where it would be “passed on”.
But, she says, she has “no idea” where these reports actually went.
“Probably to intelligence but whether they do something with it or not, I don’t really know,” she says. “No one gave us an answer back about what we had reported and conveyed.”
Hmm, I wonder why not?!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67958260
And on top of all this there were the Egyptian warnings that Something Big was imminent, and the reason they repeated the warnings was obviously because they were aware that Israel was doing nothing to counter or prepare for an attack.
Oh shite, I just noticed that I forgot to amend the date, having initially posted these posts on Craig Murray’s website a few days ago. Anyway, the article now has the date on it, and it was of course Jan 15th.
Oh shite, now I’ve just noticed that I didn’t delete the Ebenezer bit in my initial post! What a fuck up! And there’s probably MORE. Anyway, if you came across anything that didn’t make sense,, just bear in mind that I posted all three of these posts on Craig’s website on Jan 21st, and just copied and pasted them onto here, and the only thing I did remember to do was to change the first line of my first post from Craig’s website to Skwawkbox. FS!
For, around about, the past hour, I’ve been listening to Norman Finkelstein give a lecture on Gaza and the History of Gaza, going back to Suez, in 1956. Great detail. Great insight.
He’s coming to the end, now. If you can catch up on YouTube – or Restream – please do. One or two little niggles, but mostly truthful and spoken with integrity :
https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1jMKgmlyqbkJL
Damn, he’s, just, taken a break, promising to come back later, this evening.
What time? I’m not sure.
I’ll try YouTube in a couple of days.
This is the continuation of Norman Finkelstein’s lecture on Gaza. If you get a chance, do listen to it :
https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1rmxPMERWNVKN
Why do billionaires and governments scramble to control the media? Because the power over our minds is the greatest power there is.
Thank you Skwawkbox. You provide information where Establishment-Labour and the Embedded (msm) press have to deny it – or their authoritarian house-of-cards collapses.
You’re missing the morality of it all. Tsk tsk.