Israel’s Pathological Lies About October 7

By Kevin Barrett, for the just-published edition of American Free Press, posted here in full for paid subscribers only

On October 7, 2023, Gazans, led by resistance groups including Hamas, broke out of their concentration camp to inflict a monumental military defeat on their Israeli tormentors. Using extensive and detailed intelligence, including maps of classified Israeli military facilities, they defeated the Israeli army in stand-up battles not only at every Israeli base along the Gaza wall, but also at other IDF fortresses deeper in Israel. Shockingly, Palestinian fighters trounced the IDF’s elite troops. Scott Ritter calls it “the most successful military raid of this century,” pointing out: “Two battalions of the Golani brigade were routed, as were elements of other vaunted IDF units.”

Israel’s best troops, accustomed to shooting helpless children for sport, panicked when faced with an adversary that could fight back. Israel’s government and media, seeing its military panicking and losing, panicked too. In what may one day be remembered as the most monumental outpouring of cravenly mendacious hysteria in human history, Israelis began dreaming up outrageous lies about imaginary Hamas “atrocities.”

On October 10, the Israeli Foreign Ministry promoted ridiculous claims that Hamas fighters had “beheaded 40 Jewish babies.” Netanyahu’s spokesman made the rounds of Western media claiming dozens of babies and toddlers had had their “heads decapitated.” A fanatical settler named Asher Moskowitz swore he witnessed babies who had been “roasted in ovens.”

Western media trumpeted the absurd claims. One of Britain’s most reputable newspapers, The Times, “put out banner headlines that ‘Israel shows mutilated babies’ while using the image of Palestinian children wounded in Israeli airstrikes being treated at Gaza Strip's Shifa Hospital.” Weeks later, as Israel gradually released its October 7 casualty list which featured virtually no children or babies, such claims were dropped—but not before they had been promoted by US President Biden and believed by millions of Americans.

Biden hyped “stomach-churning reports of babies being killed” on “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.” The US president repeatedly cited the dead babies hoax even after Israel had withdrawn the claim. He never apologized or issued any retraction, even after his lies had been used to incite the murder of 30,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. That genocide is now being prosecuted in the World Court, thanks to South Africa’s December 29 invoking of the Genocide Convention. Will Biden, like Herman Goring and Martin Bormann, one day be sentenced to death?

Another debunked Israeli atrocity hoax was the claim that Palestinian fighters had put Israeli children in chicken-coop cages. It turned out that shortly before October 7, an Israeli had filmed children in chicken coop cages for unknown reasons, and that someone subsequently used the pictures to illustrate imaginary “Palestinian atrocities.”

Israeli atrocity hoaxers also claimed that Palestinian fighters had cut open the stomach of a pregnant woman, pulled out the baby, and left them both to die horribly. That story, unfortunately is true—except that it was Israel’s forces that committed the atrocity, and the victim was Palestinian. It happened at the Sabra and Shatila massacre, commanded by Israeli general and later president Sharon, in 1982. Once again, it turned out that the Zionists were falsely accusing their adversaries of what they themselves do.

All of these specific lies contributed to one big, general lie: The claim that Palestinian fighters deliberately killed large numbers of unarmed Israeli civilians on October 7. The world was left with the impression that the alleged 1400 victims were almost all helpless civilians.

As it turned out, Israel ultimately lowered its death count to 1200 and admitted that roughly half were uniformed military or police, including many officers, several of high rank. Of the slightly over 600 non-uniformed Israeli casualties, many were in fact armed fighters such as private security or kibbutz guards. So only a few hundred genuine, unarmed Israeli civilians—virtually all adults—died on October 7.

But who really killed them? Independent journalists and investigators have determined that the majority, probably the vast majority, of Israeli civilian casualties were killed by Israeli helicopter gunships and tanks, after the invoking of “Mass Hannibal” (the order to massacre both hostages and hostage takers on a massive scale to prevent the political liability of having to negotiate the release of hostages). As Max Blumenthal wrote on October 27: “According to Haaretz, the army was only able to restore control over Be’eri (kibbutz) after admittedly ‘shelling’ the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive. ‘The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri residents were killed...’” And that was only one kibbutz worth of Israeli Hannibal victims.

Now that their earlier lies have been exposed, Israel is suddenly inventing evidence-free claims about alleged rapes on October 7. These wild tales, like the now-abandoned beheaded babies stories, are easily debunked, but endlessly promoted by mainstream media.