Ayman Ahmed
Even mad dogs behave better. After all, who would consider it normal to kill and maim more than 120,000 people, the vast majority of them women and children, to no purpose except to spread terror? Israeli politicians and generals admit that Netanyahu has not achieved any of his stated objectives in the nine-month long war and will not do so.
Israel’s genocidal war is based on a pack of lies, duly amplified by western politicians and the media. The zionist narrative goes as follows: Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack sparked the crisis. They killed and raped Israeli women. The death toll was put at 1400. Later it was revised down to 1200 and now stands at 1139. The zionists also alleged that Hamas “beheaded 40 Israeli babies”!
Prior to Hamas’s operation, it was all normal. The “normalcy” that Israel is referring to was its army killing Palestinians. When the Palestinians decided to defend themselves, it became abnormal. When a dog bites man, it is normal; if a man tries to defends himself, well, it is abnormal.
The killing and rape allegations have been exposed as lies by multiple Israeli sources. Given people’s short memory, or propensity to lie (a la Joe Biden, Piers Morgan et al), we need to reiterate them for the record and expose these lies using Israeli sources. Why Israel resorts to such brazen lies also needs analysis.
When Hamas launched its daring operation against Israeli occupation forces on October 7, it shocked the zionist military and political leaders. They did not imagine in their wildest dreams that Hamas could carry out such a sophisticated operation. Zionist leaders were so traumatized that for many hours they did not know what to do.
No emergency cabinet meeting was called to discuss the situation. It was the US Army Central Command in Amman, Jordan that convened a meeting to take charge and comfort the shell-shocked zionists.
Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigade fighters attacked Israeli military bases and killed enemy soldiers without facing much resistance. Some Israeli officers fled to their underground bunkers to seek refuge. Hamas fighters were surprised at the ease with which they achieved their military objectives.
They also captured many settlers in Kibbutz Be’eri. The Israeli regime alleged that Hamas fighters not only killed civilians, they also “raped women” and “beheaded 40 babies”. What is the truth behind these allegations?
As Greyzone reported, the “beheaded babies” story was peddled by a notorious anti-Palestinian zionist bigot, David Ben Zion. “In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion claimed, ‘We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them’.”
This lie and the one about rapes was eagerly picked up by western media outlets with the Los Angeles Times reporter Jonah Goldberg taking the lead. True, the LA Times issued a retraction of sorts later but other US and British media outlets and officials continued to peddle these lies.
The British security minister Tom Tugendhat went even further. Giving full rein to his sexually fertile imagination, he alleged on British television that “people in Israel had been raped to death.” The Israeli army, however, refused to confirm these allegations.
The most scandalous statements were made by US President Joe Biden on two consecutive days: October 10 and 11. Biden said on October 10: “There are moments in this life when pure unadulterated evil is unleashed in this world.”
He went on: “Stomach-turning reports of babies being killed” and “women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.” He claimed to have seen photos of “beheaded babies” and “raped women”. When American reporters asked the White House to provide these photos, the White House walked back these claims. It offered the lame excuse that the president was referring to media reports.
Equally scandalous was the conduct of Israeli ambassador at the UN. Gilad Erdan alleged at a UN panel organized by the zionists that Hamas fighters had raped Israeli women, using it as a weapon of war!
The Israeli War Minister Yoav Gallant was not to be left out. He alleged that Hamas commanders had come with specific instructions about which [female] soldiers to rape. Published in the Washington Post, the newspaper later deleted the rape allegation at the request of Gallant, as it put it!
Not every western journalist accepted Israeli allegations at face value. Max Blumenthal revealed in his October 27 piece that Israeli civilians were killed not by Hamas fighters but by the Israeli army. His investigative report based on Israeli sources is worth repeating to understand what really happened on October 7.
“Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army.
“He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that as desperation began to set in, ‘the commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.’
“A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military was ‘compelled to request an aerial strike’ against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza ‘in order to repulse the terrorists’ who had seized control. That base was filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time.
“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.
“An Israeli woman named Yasmin Porat confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that the military ‘undoubtedly’ killed numerous Israeli non-combatants during gun battles with Hamas militants on October 7. ‘They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,’ she stated, referring to Israeli special forces.
“As David Sheen and Ali Abunimah reported in Electronic Intifada, Porat described ‘very, very heavy crossfire’ and Israeli tank shelling, which led to many casualties among Israelis.”
Porat’s admission about the humane treatment at the hands of Hamas should dispel the vile anti-Hamas propaganda. Blumenthal writes: “While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, ‘They [Hamas] did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.’ (Emphasis added).
“She added, ‘The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.’”
The capture by Hamas of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians and taken to Gaza as prisoners confirmed what Porat had said. This was the biggest haul of Israeli prisoners ever captured since the zionist entity’s creation. It provided Hamas with a powerful bargaining tool to secure the release of thousands of Palestinians kidnapped from their homes by the zionists.
This naturally leads to the question: why did the zionists and their western allies peddle such blatant lies? The simple answer is that demonization of Hamas was essential to justify Israeli war crimes against Gaza’s civilian population. A former advisor to Israeli prime minister candidly admitted this.
A London Times investigation found Israel’s sexual assault allegation “does not stand up to scrutiny.” Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of Israel’s Association of Rape Crisis Centers was quoted as saying: “The politicization of rape by the Israeli government was part of the political agenda of this government.... I did not think that was sensible...”
While a UN probe found Israel guilty of Extermination, Torture, and Other War Crimes in Gaza, it was “unable to verify reports of sexualized torture” by Palestinian groups. Instead, the inquiry found sexual violence by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians.
Based on these lies, Israel has used US-supplied F-15 and F-16 planes to bomb the tiny Gaza Strip destroying its entire infrastructure. Hospitals, schools, houses, mosques and bakeries have all been bombed and destroyed. Israeli political and military leaders have made no secret of making “Gaza unlivable”. With more than 38,000 people killed and another 85,000 plus injured, it has rightly been called a genocide.
At least 1.7 million Palestinians have been turned into refugees, forcing them to move multiple times under Israeli bombardment. The vast majority are on the verge of starvation which the racist zionists use as a weapon of war.
Hamas did not kill Israeli civilians. Nor did its fighters rape Israeli women or behead babies. These barbaric acts have been perpetrated by the zionists who continue to make scandalously racist remarks about Palestinians.
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