An Israeli man whose cousin was taken hostage on Oct 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
The BBC and others keep revisiting Hamas crimes that day, but fail to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens, often in grotesque fashion<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Barely a day has passed since the 7 October attack by Hamas when the western media has not revisited those events, often to reveal what it claims are new details of astonishing atrocities carried out by the Palestinian group.<\/p>\n These disclosures have served to sustain public indignation in the West, and kept Palestinian solidarity activists on the back foot.<\/p>\n In turn, the outrage has smoothed Israel\u2019s path as it has levelled vast swaths of Gaza; killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, most of them women and children; and denied the enclave\u2019s population of 2.3 million access to food, water and fuel.<\/p>\n Critically, it has also made it far easier for western governments to throw their weight behind Israel \u2013 and arm it \u2013 even as Israeli leaders have repeatedly engaged in genocidal talk<\/a> and carried out ethnic cleansing operations.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s intense bombing campaigns have herded nearly two million Palestinians into a small section of Gaza, pressed up against its short border with Egypt, while starvation and fatal disease<\/a> start to take their toll.<\/p>\n Many of the claims about 7 October have been shocking beyond belief, such as stories that Hamas beheaded 40 babies<\/a>, baked another in an oven<\/a>, carried out mass, systematic rapes<\/a>, and cut a foetus from its mother\u2019s womb<\/a>.<\/p>\n US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even described in graphic detail<\/a> \u2013 and wholly falsely \u2013 a Hamas attack on an Israeli family: \u201cThe father\u2019s eye gouged out in front of his kids. The mother\u2019s breast cut off, the girl\u2019s foot amputated, the boy\u2019s fingers cut off before they were executed.\u201d<\/p>\n Atrocities were undoubtedly committed that day by Hamas and other gunmen in Israel, as groups like Human Rights Watch have been documenting<\/a>.<\/p>\n They have continued to occur in Gaza every day since, not least through Israel\u2019s continuing and relentless bombing of civilians, and through Hamas\u2019 refusal to free the remaining Israeli hostages without an exchange of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n But in respect of the more shocking allegations against Hamas promoted by the western media \u2013 which have bolstered the case for Israel\u2019s two-month rampage in Gaza \u2013 often little or no evidence has been forthcoming beyond claims made by Israeli officials and highly partisan and unreliable first responders<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week the BBC and others led again with stories of systematic Hamas mass rapes<\/a> on 7 October. Efforts by the United Nations to investigate these claims are being obstructed by Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, once more, coverage of the growing devastation in Gaza was sidelined.<\/p>\n Media readiness to re-examine 7 October long after those events took place has operated within strict limits, however. Only claims that support Israel\u2019s narrative about what happened that day are being aired.<\/p>\n A growing body of evidence suggesting a far more complex reality, one that paints Israel\u2019s own actions in a far more troubling light, is being ignored or suppressed.<\/p>\n This deeply dishonest approach from the western media indicates that they are not, as they declare, fearlessly pursuing the truth. Rather, they are regurgitating talking points being fed to them by Israel.<\/p>\n That is not only unconscionable \u2013 particularly given Israel\u2019s long track record of promoting lies<\/a>, both small and large \u2013 but it violates all basic journalistic codes.<\/p>\n And, worse still, the media\u2019s credulous amplification of Israel\u2019s version of 7 October continues to breathe life into the Israeli case that wrecking Gaza to eliminate Hamas is morally justified.<\/p>\n Unknown to most western audiences, there has been a steady trickle of evidence from Israeli sources over the past two months implicating Israel\u2019s own military in at least some of the killings attributed to Hamas.<\/p>\n This week the Israeli military finally conceded<\/a> that it had killed Israelis on October 7 in incidents of an \u201cimmense and complex quantity\u201d. Given this, it added with transparent non-logic: \u201cIt would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n How is it possible, given their continuing interest in scrutinising the events of 7 October, that none of the western media has picked up on any of this distressing evidence, let alone investigated it?<\/p>\n It is hard not to conclude that the western media are only interested in stories \u2013 and largely indifferent to whether they are true or false \u2013 that portray Hamas, but not Israel, as the bad guys. That would mean the media are not dispassionate reporters, but have been recruited by Israel as its active cheerleaders.<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s official story, echoed by the western media, is that Hamas had long planned a crazed, barbaric rampage through communities in Israel \u2013 driven by a mix of primitive, religious bloodlust and Jew hatred.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s chance to realise this goal came on 7 October, according to the Israeli narrative, when Israel let down its guard momentarily and Hamas broke through the hi-tech fence meant to keep it and Gaza\u2019s other 2.3 million inhabitants permanently imprisoned.<\/p>\n During the breakout, Hamas focused on the slaughter of civilians<\/a>, killing babies by beheading them and using rape as a weapon of war and defilement. They fired into the homes of neighbouring Israeli communities, often leaving them in ruins and burning their victims alive.<\/p>\n Admittedly, the claim about 40 beheaded babies has been quietly shelved<\/a>, because there is precisely zero evidence for it. According to Israel\u2019s own published figures<\/a>, only two infants died that day.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the media rarely challenge<\/a> Israeli spokespeople, or western politicians, when they make this long-discredited allegation.<\/p>\n But many of these other allegations are no less evidence-free and need scrutiny too.<\/p>\n Although they are rarely given a voice, Palestinians have their own, alternative narrative of what happened that day \u2013 and parts of it are being bolstered by accounts from Israeli sources.<\/p>\n In this telling, Hamas long trained for its breakout<\/a>, and with a strategic aim in mind. The goal was to launch a commando-style assault on four military bases surrounding Gaza to kill or take hostage as many Israeli soldiers as possible, and a similar assault on local Israeli communities to seize civilian hostages.<\/p>\n The aim, according to this narrative, was to trade the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, thousands of whom are in Israeli jails, including women and children, often held without a military trial or even charges.<\/p>\n To the Palestinian public, these prisoners are no less hostages than the Israelis held in Gaza.<\/p>\n Hamas stormed military bases and the Israeli communities of Be\u2019eri and Kfar Azza<\/a>. That is why about a third of the 1,200 Israelis killed that day were soldiers, police or armed guards \u2013 and why many of the 240 hostages were serving in the Israeli military too<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to most accounts, even Israeli ones, Hamas accidentally stumbled<\/a> on to the Nova music festival, which had been relocated to an area close to the fence with Gaza. There were unexpected clashes with security guards, while the attack on festivalgoers turned especially chaotic and gruesome.<\/p>\n So why did Hamas depart from its plan by killing so many civilians? And why did it do so in such a savage, gratuitous and time-consuming fashion that involved burning Israelis alive, using its firepower to blast their homes into ruins, and setting fire to hundreds of cars<\/a> on the highway near the music festival?<\/p>\nLittle evidence<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Active cheerleaders<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Challenge to official story<\/strong><\/h2>\n