On October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters breached the boundaries dividing Israel and Gaza and committed atrocities against vulnerable populations. They targeted non-combatants hiding in shelters. Women. Old people. Children. Foreign nationals. They rampaged through Israel for more than a day before being driven back by Israeli forces.
When it was over, 695 Israeli civilians were confirmed killed, including 36 children, alongside 373 members of Israeli security forces and 71 foreigners. Hamas also took roughly 240 hostages with them as they fled.
In response, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a full siege of Gaza – cutting residents off from all food, water, electricity or aid. Communications infrastructure has been targeted, limiting Gazans’ ability to communicate with the outside world. Ariel bombardments have killed over two thousand Palestinians including over 700 children. Huge swaths of Gazan cities have been destroyed, rendering an estimated 300,000 Gazans homeless. A ground invasion seems imminent.
In the days that followed Hamas’ raid, online spaces were flooded with images and videos conveying the horrors visited upon Israeli civilians. However, many false or unsubstantiated claims began to circle as well. As the conflict escalates, it will be critical that journalists, academics and observers of all kinds work overtime to make sure that we are talking, thinking and writing about events on the basis of things we fully know to be true.
The Fog of War(mongering)
The conflict was rife with hazy or outright false information from the start. There were claims about Iranian involvement in the attack that were paired with criticism of Joe Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for U.S. hostages. Videos circulated purporting to show large numbers of Americans chanting ‘Death to America’ in the aftermath of Hamas’ massacre.
In fact, the video in question was from 2020, following the U.S. assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Moreover, at the time of Hamas’ assault, Iran had not yet spent a single dollar of the funds restored to them by Joe Biden (which are tightly regulated and monitored). And U.S. intelligence suggests Iran had no direct knowledge or involvement in the plot (and were, in fact, reportedly surprised by the assault). Nonetheless, the Biden Administration decided to renege on their agreement with the Islamic Republic, refreezing the assets in order to stave off rightwing criticism — a decision that will probably have significant geopolitical consequences downstream.
One of the most horrifying allegations that has gone viral on social media and the mainstream press was that Hamas beheaded 40 babies while carrying out a massacre at a kibbutz. However, when SkyNews tried to get confirmation of this atrocity, the IDF said it was unable to confirm the claims (other outlets were subsequently given similar responses). Unfortunately, many other media organizations had already reported this incident as fact based on unverified claims of a known political extremist.
Some have subsequently issued retractions, clarifications or added editor’s notes. However, this diligence arrived too late to limit the spread of this uncorroborated claim because, on October 11th, President Joe Biden seemed to confirm the story, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”
Shortly after the president left the podium, the White House walked back this statement and acknowledged to the Washington Post that neither the president nor U.S. intelligence services have any corroboration or have seen any photographic evidence of the specific atrocity in question. The president, they said, based his comments on news coverage (which, itself, had never been substantiated). When the Washington Post reached out to the IDF for information about whether new evidence had emerged to support the allegations, the IDF declined to comment.
However, revised IDF estimates suggest that there were not even 40 people under the age of 18 killed who were the massacre writ large, let alone 40 babies being decapitated in a single location.
An investigation by Haaretz determined that no babies seem to have been decapitated on October 7. Nor were any babies cooked in an oven. Nor were any babies hung. Nor were any babies cut out of their mothers and executed. Nor were any children rounded up and killed together.
In fact, Haaretz notes, ‘only’ one single baby was killed on October 7: 10-month-old Mila Cohen, who was shot alongside her father. There was an additional case where a pregnant Bedouin woman was shot while trying to get to the hospital to give birth. Though wounded, the mother was able to make it to the hospital, although her child died shortly after being born. One toddler, 2 year old Omer Kedem Siman Tov, also perished on October 7. The remainder of the non-adult casualties were school-aged children. All said, again, a total of 36 people under the age of 18 were killed in the attack, amounting to 3 percent of the total casualties.
Haaretz concluded that many of the soldiers, aid workers and “eyewitnesses” who delivered reports on Israeli media portraying much higher levels of casualties among infants, toddlers and children, and presenting extreme manners of death for how these children purportedly died, were not simply mistaken, but seem to have been outright lying in order to stir up antipathy towards Gazans in anticipation of Israel’s inevitable retaliatory campaign.
The fact that the “beheaded babies” (or “many dead babies”) narrative was demonstrably false propaganda, however, did not stop it from being promoted by the President of the United States himself and many mainstream media outlets without verification or even, in many cases, an attempt at verification. Indeed, even after the White House has formally walked back Biden’s claim, the president himself continues to falsely claim to have seen pictures of beheaded babies.
Likewise, there were many strong claims made about sexual assaults carried out by Hamas. Rape is a recognized and all-too-common weapon of war, and it should always be seen as a possibility during conflict. Yet, in the days following the raid, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told The Forward that it has no evidence that rape occurred during the invasion or in its aftermath.
To date, only one person has come forward claiming to have experienced sexual assault at the hands of Hamas militants — Amit Soussana — who described having been coerced into a sex act one single time, a while after her capture, at the hands of a militant who had been overseeing her since October 7. In her telling, her assaulter cried immediately after his assault, begged for her forgiveness and secrecy, and then tried to treat her extra nicely. He never sexually assaulted her again, nor did anyone else. Nor did she describe having observed any other women being sexually abused during her time in captivity.
In the immediate aftermath of the raid, many others claimed to have witnesses widespread sexual assaults ‘first hand’ in sympathetic media outlets and other informal channels. However, few of these ‘witnesses’ have cooperated with Israeli or international authorities, and it’s proven difficult for investigators to substantiate that any particular individuals actually experienced the alleged horrors.
Haaretz notes that despite many lurid tales being circulated in the media by purported eyewitnesses, “police have taken statements from very few eyewitnesses to sex crimes” and “In the few cases where police have already amassed testimony about the sexual assaults Hamas committed during its massacre in southern Israel, they haven’t yet been able to identify the specific victims of the acts to which witnesses have testified.”
The New York Times elaborates (in a deeply problematic article that many journalists at the Times have disavowed for underemphasizing the points that follow and providing far too much credulity to straightforwardly shaky sources), “Investigators with Israel’s top national police unit, Lahav 433, have been steadily gathering evidence but they have not put a number on how many women were raped, saying that most are dead — and buried — and that they will never know. No survivors have spoken publicly… many bodies were buried as quickly as possible. Most were never examined.”
Although Hamas militants filmed much of the attack, there is no videographic substantiating sexual violence either, other than videos shared with the media by Israel’s Shin Bet security service, wherein “interrogated persons can be seen describing the orders they had received to kill and kidnap civilians, as well as orders to ‘sully; women – meaning to defile them through sexual acts.” However, in their report exploring sexual violence on October 7, the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights emphasized, “We have not relied on the accounts recorded in these videos due to severe concern that the interrogations included the use of torture.” As I’ve detailed at length elsewhere, ‘enhanced interrogation’ is great for getting people to say whatever the torturers want them to say, but it rarely produces accurate and actionable information.
Beyond these detainees who ‘confessed’ under torture, no specific perpetrators of sexual violence have been identified to date. Haaretz observes, “The effort to link suspects to specific crimes is hampered by the fact that many of the bodies weren’t photographed. Nonetheless, they reveal, “the State Prosecutor’s Office intends to indict the Hamas attackers for all the crimes committed during the massacres, even in the absence of solid evidence tying them to a specific act.”
In short, the evidence for widespread sexual assault by Hamas on October 7 is comprised primarily of testimony by purported eyewitnesses (recounting things that ostensibly happened to other people, whom they could not identify) who have generally declined to cooperate with investigators seeking justice for alleged crimes, alongside Israeli volunteer forces and soldiers — all stakeholders that have been caught engaging in blatantly dishonesty about atrocities on October 7 — including confirmed cases of lying about sexual assaults. Moreover, these accounts, in the Israeli government’s own reckoning, generally lack specific identification of concrete individuals who experienced or perpetrated these atrocities, and the specific claims are largely uncorroborated by medical reports, photographic or videographic evidence either.
The most credible accusation of sexual violence that occurred involved one single incident, with one single individual, long after October 7 — and the perpetrator was described as acting in secret and independently from others (and indeed tried to conceal his actions from others), and was horrified at himself in the aftermath and never tried to do anything like it again.
This does not mean that no sexual violence occurred on October 7. It means that the evidentiary basis for many widely-circulated claims about a systematic campaign of sexual violence is extremely weak at present, and this is something that should be acknowledged in any reporting on the matter. Many media outlets have tempered their assertions of sexual violence as the lack of corroboration became more obvious (although they should have sought corroboration from the outset). Politicians in the United States and Israel nonetheless continue to push narratives about widespread sexual atrocities with abandon, and many of their supporters have attempted to demonize anyone who does not accept these claims unquestioningly.
Myriad other examples could be offered: There were widely shared videos that purported to show terrified Israeli children locked in cages by laughing Hamas militants. Follow-up reporting showed that the video was actually taken days before the conflict exploded and that it was impossible to determine the identity of the children. There was a video of a young woman being burned alive, allegedly by Hamas militants. While the atrocity was real, it was actually a video from Guatemala in 2015.
However, even if many widely-circulated claims seem to be false, exaggerated, unsubstantiated or lack critical context – and the veracity of such claims should be challenged – it is also the case that many documented atrocities were committed by Hamas and are worthy of being acknowledged and condemned.
For instance, although no one in the Biden Administration was presented with verification of decapitated babies in particular, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken emphasized “We did see photographs, videos that the Israeli government shared with us… an infant riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, young people burned alive in their cars or hideaway rooms.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since shared some of these images with the press. The Israeli Defense Forces have subsequently conducted screenings of curated bodycam footage recovered from terrorists (who were recording and livestreaming their atrocities) to help journalists understand what transpired. There is no reason to doubt: horrific atrocities occurred.
It should not need to be said that murdering women, children, senior citizens, uninvolved foreign nationals and other non-combatants for sport is not “resistance.” Nonetheless, a distressing number of activists and intellectuals have tried to implicitly justify or outright celebrate these crimes – discrediting their causes and organizations in the process.
Others began circulating false or uncorroborated claims of Hamas’ atrocities in order to justify ongoing and impending war crimes against Gazan civilians. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s Likud Party communications minister has proposed emergency regulations that would punish Israeli citizens for spreading information perceived to undermine the country’s morale or give ammunition to its adversaries. Even in the absence of this law, a crackdown on dissent is underway in Israel, political demonstrations have been banned in Tel Aviv indefinitely, and the IDFs official media censor has banned domestic journalists and foreign reporters based in Israel from reporting on a number of inconvenient topics.
Of course, Hamas and its foreign allies have been spreading propaganda as well. And the militant group has consistently punished those within its jurisdiction who undermine preferred narratives.
Truth, as they say, is the first casualty of war.
The Reality of the Situation
For those who would like to minimize unnecessary suffering and death, it is critical to respond to information warfare with solid facts, stated as straightforwardly, objectively and holistically as we can manage.
For instance, while it’s important to recognize the magnitude of the tragedy that Israelis are working through, it’s just as critical to acknowledge the scale of Palestinian death and suffering – imposed primarily upon people who had nothing to do with the massacre.
According to data by the Israeli conflict monitoring organization B’Tselem, between 2000 and September 2023, eight times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the ongoing conflict. Critically, roughly half of all Israeli deaths occurred in Palestinian territories, not in their own country. Ninety-nine percent of Palestinian casualties likewise occurred in Palestine. Many more will perish in the territories over the days to come.
Life in Gaza was already quite desperate. The new layers of collective punishment being meted out against ordinary Gazans is a war crime just as much as Hamas’ hostage taking, targeting of civilians or use of human shields.
However, thanks to U.S. veto power in virtually all international bodies, Israel is not meaningfully accountable to international law.
It has little to fear from neighboring states either. The U.S. has moved multiple aircraft carrier strike groups into the Eastern Mediterranean, supplemented by a Marine rapid response force. 2,000 additional U.S. soldiers are prepared to deploy as needed. The Biden Administration has stated unequivocally that any third parties who try to involve themselves will have to reckon with the United States military in addition to the IDF. Most have sent signals that they plan to sit this one out if they can.
Secure from international pressures, Gallant has “released all constraints” on Israeli forces. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to turn Gaza into a “deserted island” and kill every single member of Hamas. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, meanwhile, has asserted that all Gazan civilians bear collective guilt for the crimes of Hamas, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true.”
According to comments offered to Israeli officials to the Financial Times and other media organizations, a minimum objective of the current operations — the goal of the blanket bombardment — is to completely and permanently depopulate much of northern Gaza to create a ‘buffer zone‘ between Gaza and Israel.
Netanyahu has instructed Gaza’s civilian population to “get out now” and has insinuated that anyone who ‘chooses’ to stay will be considered a legitimate target. The IDF has dropped Arabic-language leaflets in northern Gaza declaring, “everyone who chooses not to evacuate… may be considered a partner in a terrorist organization.”
But the truth is, Gazans have nowhere to go.
Gaza is already one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Israeli blockades prevent exit by sea or air. Most of the rest of the land perimeter of Gaza borders Israel and has been closed in the aforementioned siege. Practically speaking, the only way out of Gaza is by exiting into Egypt. However, the Egyptian government has refused to allow Gazans into their country for fear it would be a one-way trip.
Within the Arab world, it is widely believed that the proposed humanitarian corridor is a means of ejecting most of Gaza’s population permanently and annexing the vacated Gaza Strip fully into Israel. Israel’s recent calls for 1.1 million Palestinians to move in the direction of the Rafah Crossing are being interpreted in much the same way – as a first step to driving them out of the country altogether. Many of those who fled south have now returned home because Israel has been bombing the very areas they instructed Gazans to flee to (convoys of refugees have also been targeted). The message Israel seems to be trying to send is that nowhere in Gaza is safe, and they should get out of the country altogether.
This perception was only heightened by Israel’s repeated bombing of the crossing in recent days, which could compromise Egypt’s ability to keep refugees out in the event of escalation. Leaked reports from a Likud-aligned Israeli think tank and the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence do seem to suggest that Israel is trying to convince Egypt to integrate the people of Gaza in exchange for significant financial compensation. According to some reports in Israeli media, Netanyahu has gone so far as to pledge getting all of Egypt’s debt to the World Bank wiped away in exchange for absorbing the population of Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula — a potentially enticing proposition given Egypt’s current financial woes.
So far, however, Egypt is standing firm in their refusal to accept Palestinian refugees and has, a senior Egyptian security official put it, taken “unprecedented measures” to reinforce its border.
As a result of these perceptions and constraints, Gazans have no serious options to escape the violence. Consequently, the siege, ground invasion and ariel bombardment that follows will be bloody, with non-combatants, especially children (who comprise most of Gaza’s population) bearing the brunt.
It is critical to contextualize how things got to this point.
This conflict was caused by Objectively Terrible Leaders who were happy to Sacrifice large numbers of their own people in the service of political Ends
The last time legislative elections were held in Palestine was in 2006. In that election, 76 percent of voters turned out and Hamas won a 44 percent plurality of the vote. Overall, then, only a third of all voters who were eligible at the time cast ballots for Hamas – and most contemporary Gazans were either not alive yet or were toddlers at the time these elections were held. Nonetheless, the party has forcibly retained control over the Gaza Strip ever since.
Throughout their tenure, Hamas has done a terrible job managing affairs of the state. They consistently divert resources that could help ordinary Gazans into perpetuating their violent struggle against Israel instead. In the aftermath of the recent massacre in Israel, many Hamas leaders have repeatedly described governing Gaza as a game they were playing to lull their adversaries into complacency rather than a responsibility they take seriously and perform to the best of their ability.
When asked why they did not build shelters for Gazans in addition to tunnels for fighters, a Hamas spokesperson declared that ensuring Gazans safety and well-being is not their concern at all — that’s up to Israel and the international community — all Hamas cares about is fighting. While living luxurious lives in Doha, party leaders have described Gazans as happy to throw their lives away in the service of Hamas’ ambitions.
In reality, polling conducted prior to the most recent outbreak of violence, roughly two-thirds of Gazan respondents said they have “not a lot” of trust in Hamas or “none at all.” More than three quarters of respondents said the Hamas government is “not very responsive” or “not responsive at all” to what its constituents want:
Other contemporaneous polls showed that Gazans prefer virtually every alternative political group over Hamas. Most Gazans wanted Hamas to stop calling for the destruction of Israel and instead move forward with a two-state solution. An even larger share hoped Hamas would continue abiding by its ceasefire with Israel. Still other recent polling found that 77% of Gazans want there to be elections, but more than two-thirds do not expect them to happen. Perhaps because only a third of Palestinian respondents think Hamas should represent them (although an even smaller share support Fateh and its leader Mahmoud Abbas).
Indeed, despite Hamas often responding violently to dissent, there were major public protests in Gaza against the organization in the months leading up to the massacre (they were eventually suppressed).
Contrary to Israeli President Herzog’s insinuations, this was not a conflict Gazans were looking for. Hamas’ actions do not represent the expressed will or interests of most Gazans. These are demonstrable facts.
It’s also true that, for more than a decade, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly sought to bolster Hamas in order to divide Palestinians against one-another and discredit the Palestinian cause. As recently as 2019, Netanyahu is on record telling Likud Party representatives in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) that “anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is a part of our strategy” (it’s been part of Israeli hardliners’ strategy since Hamas’ origin).
In the leadup to this most recent conflagration, Defense Minister Gallant publicly chastised Netanyahu for engaging in reckless provocation of the Palestinians in a way that seemed likely to stir up major conflict, as happened in 2014.
More concerningly, according to Egyptian intelligence officials, Netanyahu had been warned in the days leading up to the raid that “something big” was coming from Hamas. Egypt’s Defense Minister General, Abbas Kamel, claimed to have personally called Netanyahu ten days before the raid and said he was “shocked by Netanyahu’s indifference” to the warnings. Although Netanyahu has denied these claims, they have been corroborated by U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R, Texas). Although he didn’t want to “get too much into classified” information, McCaul told reporters that U.S. intelligence confirms that “Egypt warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.”
U.S. intelligence, analyzing data provided by Israel, likewise determined that an attack seemed to be immanent in the days leading up to the raid. According to the Associated Press, Hamas carried out practice runs of their attack in plain sight along their border with Israel and even posted videos of these trial runs online in the weeks leading up to the massacre. The night before the massacre, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel’s FBI) made note of irregular activity among Hamas operatives in Gaza. According to the New York Times, Israel has obtained a 40 page document detailing Hamas’ plan in intricate detail as early as 2022.
Yet, as the Times of Israel reported, not only was there a lack of preparation or heightened vigilance or precaution in response to these unambiguous signals, even normal safeguards somehow simultaneously and conspicuously failed: “For Palestinians in Gaza, Israel’s eyes are never very far away. Surveillance drones buzz constantly in the skies. The highly secured border is awash with security cameras and soldiers on guard. Intelligence agencies work sources and cyber capabilities to draw out information. But Israel’s eyes appeared to have been closed in the lead-up to the surprise onslaught.”
Hamas, it seems, was also stunned by the lack of resistance they encountered. As a diplomatic source conveyed to Al-Monitor, “Their success surprised them, too. They hoped to kill some Israelis, embarrass the IDF and return to Gaza with two or three kidnapped Israelis. Instead, they roamed inside Israel for more than a day, killing over a thousand Israelis and getting stuck with something like 200 abductees.”
“They are very worried,” he continued, “with two abductees, they could have negotiated with Israel for permission to build a seaport and freedom for hundreds of prisoners held in Israeli jails. With more than 100 abductees, they will face the entire Israeli army inside Gaza. That’s the tragedy of their success.”
Seized materials from Hamas militants seem to confirm that there was no intention to take hostages back to Gaza, let alone hundreds of them. Instead, Hamas planned to take Israelis captive and then have Hamas officials negotiate with Israeli military leaders within Israeli territory when the military arrived to confront them. The decision to flee back to Gaza with captives in tow may have been, in part, because rather than exercising restraint or negotiating for the release of hostages, the IDF seems to have executed their (in)famous ‘Hannibal directive‘ — indiscriminately killing anything that moved, hostages and militants alike, in order to exterminate as many terrorists as possible and deprive Hamas of leverage in eventual talks (or protection in the form of ‘human shields’).
Israeli police reports and eyewitness testimonies reported by Haaretz confirm that the IDF may have been responsible for a significant share of civilian casualties at both the Nova music festival and kibbutz Be’eri.
The Israeli government has subsequently declared that they will not take the hostages into consideration for how they prosecute their war in Gaza. They have rejected offers to release hostages in return for temporary ceasefires. As a consequence, more than 20 Hamas captives have reportedly been killed by Israeli airstrikes so far. More are likely to die in the weeks to come.
At some point there will likely be a reckoning over how Hamas was able to carry out the attack, why they were able to rampage with so little opposition for so long, and why the Israeli forces ultimately responded in the way they did, and what Netanyahu knew and when. Already, multiple survivors of the massacre, many families of those taken hostage and some families of those who lost loved ones, have condemned Netanyahu for his leadership before, during and after Hamas’ invasion.
Bibi has always justified his rule, and his most controversial decisions, by promising they keep Israelis safe:
“The ability to spot danger in advance and prepare for it is the test of a body’s functioning. The Jewish nation has never excelled at foreseeing danger. We were surprised again and again… that won’t happen under my leadership.”
The events of October 7 belie this long-running narrative. An overwhelming majority of the Israeli public views him as responsible for failing to prevent the tragedy. There are widespread calls for his resignation or ouster. Ordinary citizens are condemning Likud Party ministers on sight for dragging Israel towards an abyss. This is not a conflict most Israelis were looking for either.
Yet, although the war has been a disaster for Israel, for Gaza, and for Netanyahu’s polling numbers, he may have already achieved his primary goal.
Is It Too Late for the Truth to Matter?
Bibi’s main political ambition has always been to destroy the prospect of an independent Palestine. He has declared openly that, so long as he remains Prime Minister, there will never be a Palestinian state. Now, even if Netanyahu was removed from office due to whatever culpability he shares for Hamas’ success, his ongoing bids to undermine Israeli democracy, or the myriad criminal proceedings against him – it may not be enough to rob him of his ultimate prize.
The atrocities that were allowed to happen under his watch, alongside the upcoming brutal invasion of Gaza he plans to oversee, seem likely to ensure that any two-state solution will remain out of reach even after he is no longer in power. The enmity and mistrust between the parties will be too strong – the damage too profound.
The window to prevent this outcome is narrowing by the day. If the truth is important, now is the time to tell it. If facts matter at all, now is the time to be clear on them — including and especially with respect to facts that are inconvenient for one’s own side.