Tag: friendly fire

Yes it Was a “False Flag”, “Murder their Own Soldiers”. Israelis Widely Used “Hannibal Directive” on Oct. 7: Israeli Report

According to a source in the Israeli forces’ Southern Command, the region was designed to become a “killing zone,” while another commanded that “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”

Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that during Operation al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) routinely used a command that allowed soldiers to murder their own soldiers, namely the infamous Hannibal Directive.

The Israeli Air Force targeted at least three military facilities and outposts during the operation and the IOF opened fire on the walled separation barrier dividing Gaza and “Israel,” when Israelis were being taken captive.

According to a source in the Israeli Southern Command, the region was designed to become a “killing zone,” while another commanded that “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”

These instructions are known as the “Hannibal Directive,” requiring the IOF to take all measures to avoid the capture of Israeli soldiers, including murdering them.

Haaretz‘s investigation was based on records and testimony from troops, mid-level, and senior army commanders and data indicated that many taken captive were subjected to Israeli gunfire and “were in danger.”

According to Haaretz, Israeli commanders took decisions early on October 7 based on unverified intelligence with one source citing “crazy hysteria,” adding that “No one had a clue about the number of people kidnapped or where army forces were.”

An Israeli source told Haaretz that any person making a decision “knew that our combatants in the area could be hit as well.”

Another order directed all units to fire mortars against the Gaza Strip, despite the occupation’s feeble knowledge of the locations of soldiers and citizens. The order was expanded later to prohibit any vehicle from entering Gaza.

A source in the Southern Command told Haaretz that “Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers,” adding that “everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza.”

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US military officials doubt Kiev’s version of F-16 downing

Ukrainian Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes was paraded as someone who could change the war in Kiev’s favour by piloting the F-16 fighter jets but was quickly killed when engaging with the Russian military, as expected by all respectable sources. The official story is that he was killed in friendly fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, however, the New York Times reported, citing US military officials, that this was most likely not the case.

“The death of a widely celebrated pilot and the loss of one of the long-coveted fighter jets so soon after their deployment cast a pall over the battlefield just as the giddy first days of the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region were fading away and concerns mounted over an advancing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine,” the outlet reported.

On August 29, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine acknowledged the loss of an F-16 fighter jet transferred to Kiev and a special commission is investigating the causes of the accident. The Wall Street Journal previously wrote that the F-16 crashed due to pilot error, whilst Ukrainian lawmaker Mariana Bezuhla said that Ukraine’s Patriot air defence system shot down the F-16 due to a failure in coordination between units.

The New York Times reported that two senior US military officials said friendly fire was unlikely to have caused the F-16 crash. The publication did not specify what the statement was based on or mention their version of events of the fighter jet’s destruction. At the same time, the US military told the newspaper that American and Ukrainian investigators were considering many possible reasons for Kiev’s loss of the F-16.

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Friendly Fire or Defective Old Plane? How Ukraine Lost Its First F-16 Jet and Famed Pilot

One of the first Ukrainian F-16 jets crashed on August 26, the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed on Thursday.

Ukrainian MP Maryana Bezuglaya claimed the F-16 was hit by Ukraine’s Patriot anti-aircraft missile system “due to a lack of coordination between units.”

When Were the First F-16s Delivered to Ukraine?

The first batch of six of the promised 80 F-16s arrived in Ukraine at the beginning of August.

It’s unclear who exactly provided the first batch: Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway earlier vowed to provide the Kiev regime with them.

US President Joe Biden first authorized NATO’s European allies to send F-16s to Ukraine in August 2023.

How Much Does the F-16 Cost?

The US-made F-16 that was delivered to Ukraine can cost up to $60 million depending on the configuration and possible upgrades, according to some estimates.

As per the Wall Street Journal, many of the F-16s promised to Ukraine are second-hand and have decades of flying time already.

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Israeli army probe covered up “friendly fire” killings on 7 October

The Israeli army’s first published report about the events of 7 October 2023 praises the general who led Israeli forces in battle at Kibbutz Be’eri on that day for ordering tank fire at a home killing up to 10 civilian captives.

The shelling killed almost everyone in and around the house, including dozens of Palestinian resistance fighters.

The report amounts to a shoddy cover-up, inconsistent with known facts, and an intentional rewriting of what happened to exonerate Israeli forces of killing their own citizens that day.

Although the report was supposed to have been written by officers with no connection to those who fought in the battle, one of its authors was Lieutenant Colonel Elihai Bin Nun who fought at Be’eri on 7 October under Brigadier General Barak Hiram, the commander of Israeli forces at the kibbutz on that day, The New York Times revealed.

When Bin Nun’s participation in the battle was revealed, the army removed from the report any mention of his role as an author, the Israeli outlet Ynet noted.

The army’s full account of what happened at Kibutz Be’eri has not been made public, but the Israeli military published official summaries of its report in Hebrew and English on 11 July.

As a result of its inquiry, the army commends Hiram for acting in a “professional and ethical manner” by ordering the fatal tank fire. It whitewashes the civilian deaths the shelling caused, only accepting responsibility for one of the 13 captives killed at the home of kibbutz resident Pessi Cohen.

The army only admits to killing one civilian, Adi Dagan, as his death was directly witnessed by the only captive to survive the tank shelling, Adi’s wife Hadas Dagan.

The couple and four other Israeli civilians, including Pessi herself, spent the battle on the grassy lawn outside the home, lying low to avoid the hailstorm of bullets that whistled over their heads for hours.

While the army’s full account of the battle has not been made public, a detailed six-page synopsis of the report published by Israel Army Radio military correspondent Doron Kadosh sheds further light on the events. It acknowledges that the number of civilians inside the house was seven.

In its first public explanation of the incident one week after the 7 October attack, the army asserted that not seven civilians had died in the house but 15 – and that eight of them were babies.

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Leaks reveal Israel killed 366 UN staffers, family members in Gaza: Report

Hundreds of UN staff members and their family members have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, according to an unreleased UN report obtained by the Drop Site news outlet on 24 July. 

At least 195 UN staff and 172 of their dependents had been killed by Israeli forces by the end of June, the unreleased UN report states. The UN defines dependents as persons belonging to a staff member’s family who are formally recognized as financially reliant on that staff member.

The UN Crisis Coordination Centre found that five UN Development Program dependents, four UNICEF dependents, three World Food Programme (WFP) dependents, two World Health Organization (WHO) dependents, and 158 UNRWA dependents have been killed by Israeli forces. 

It had been reported in May that Israel had killed 188 members of UNRWA. UNRWA regularly releases situation reports detailing Tel Aviv’s targeting of staff members and facilities. 

UNRWA facilities have been the sites of numerous massacres committed by Israeli troops. 

However, these are the first numbers indicating the extent to which Israel has targeted the families of UN staff members. 

According to Drop Site, the report was circulated internally at the start of this month. The UN did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the weekend, on 21 July, a UN convoy came under heavy fire by Israeli forces despite prior coordination with the army. 

An Israeli airstrike on the UNRWA-run Abu Oreiban school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat Camp a week earlier, on 14 July, killed at least 15 people, just a day after the strike on southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi that killed at least 90 and injured hundreds on 13 July. 

Tel Aviv has accused UNRWA members of involvement in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October but has yet to provide evidence for its claims. 

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Israeli outlet confirms IDF killed its own people on Oct. 7th

After nine months of an Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has confirmed what my colleagues Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada (EI) and Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone reported back in October: that Israel invoked the Hannibal Directive and killed its own citizens on Oct. 7th.

According to one Israeli military source, Israeli forces were ordered to turn the boundary area around Gaza into a “killing zone” — thereby knowingly killing Israelis in that zone. Under the Hannibal doctrine, Israel’s aim was to kill its own people rather than let them be traded in a future exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The Israeli military has suppressed this killing of its own people on Oct. 7th all while manufacturing support for its rampage in Gaza ever since.

The same establishment media outlets that have long ignored this aspect of Oct. 7th smeared my independent media colleagues at Grayzone and EI for reporting it. This includes two hit pieces in the Washington Post, and even more brazenly, three pieces in Haaretz — which is now acknowledging what it has repeatedly attacked Max and Grayzone for reporting.

I went on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” to debate this issue and related matters. I was joined by the veteran, courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy along with two other Israelis — one a former IDF spokesperson who was not keen on letting me speak.

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Israeli military investigation reveals many Oct. 7 Israeli casualties were caused by IDF rather than Hamas

Israel has used the events of October 7 to justify a lengthy and very bloody war in Gaza that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. On that date, Hamas terrorists entered southern Israel, where they reportedly killed more than 1,100 people and took 251 hostages.

However, it turns out that some of the Israeli deaths on that day came not at the hands of Hamas but instead as the result of “friendly fire” from the Israeli military. This is something that Hamas has been claiming for some time now, and many media reports about it were quickly dismissed as “disinformation.”

Now, however, leaks from a report compiled by the Israeli military itself confirm that a lot of the October 7 casualties were the result of friendly fire.

According to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, a military investigation revealed that “friendly fires led to the deaths and injuries of an unspecified number of Israeli soldiers”. In addition, IDF forces were deployed in a “chaotic” manner.

A full official report is expected to be released next month, and it will essentially be an official admission that numerous Israelis were killed by the IDF and not Hamas. The IDF has not denied the information that has been leaked so far despite being aggressive about denying other leaks and failures.

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USS Liberty Survivors Reunite and Call For a Congressional Investigation into the Deadly Attack on Their Ship

“If the truth about the attack on the USS Liberty isn’t told to the American public, our Republic will fall. When your own government sets you up to be murdered, this speaks to the influence the Zionist state of Israel has with our politicians. Not one president from LBJ to Biden has lifted a finger nor has the Congress.” – Phil Tourney, USS Liberty attack survivor.

Now is the best time for Americans to demand an open and honest congressional investigation of the June 8, 1967 unprovoked and deliberate attack on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military. The brutal assault that killed 34 American sailors and wounded 171 of their shipmates was then covered up by Commander-in-Chief President Lyndon B. Johnson, military leadership, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.Phillip F. Nelson, Ron…Best Price: $12.75Buy New $10.00(as of 07:20 UTC – Details)

Many survivors and other analysts now conclude the attack was a planned false flag intended to sink the ship and kill all aboard as a pretext to gain public support for the US to join Israel in its battle against Egypt during the Six Day War. This is when Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

Eleven USS Liberty survivors, their wives and children, widows and children of the crew and supporters of the cause for justice for the USS Liberty travelled from all over America to gather in Arlington, Virginia for their annual reunion on June 7-8. For the first time, Arlington National Cemetery granted the survivors’ request for a presentation by the Navy color guard, the playing of Taps, and a Navy chaplain to lead prayer at the solemn ceremony at the gravesite of the USS Liberty Navy crew blown to bits by a torpedo, and slaughtered with napalm, cannon and gunfire.

The Israeli government’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, and the US government’s funding of weapons and arms to commit these atrocities, are awakening many who previously were incapable of psychologically process that Israel, supposedly America’s ally, could plan and perpetrate a deadly attack on an American ship, and that the US government could be an accomplice to this abhorrent betrayal. Author James Bamford, keynote speaker at the reunion banquet, said the bloody assault marked the point when the Israeli lobby, principally AIPAC, went into high gear to influence and control the US government.

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Don’t Forget the USS Liberty’s Dead and Wounded

Reader’s celebrating and remembering veterans on Memorial Day and on D Day should not overlook the sacrifices of the dead and wounded on board the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.

I am grateful to those that have read my previous stories about the sneak attack made on the USS Liberty by Israel, an attack which killed 34 and wounded 171 Americans. I am continually surprised at the number of people that are not aware of Israel’s duplicity and treachery visited on an unarmed, plainly marked and neutral ship of the United States while it operated in international waters.

The dead and wounded of the USS Liberty didn’t go down fighting in the sense that they were in a war with a known adversary. Yes, many went down fighting while defending their ship against a false-flag, intentional attack by their supposed ally, Israel.

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IDF Tanks Open Fire On Own Gaza HQ, Killing 5 Troops In Disastrous Friendly Fire Incident

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have just suffered their biggest ‘friendly fire’ disaster to date during military operations in northern Gaza. In a Wednesday incident, a pair of Israeli tanks targeted a building which was serving as a forward operating HQ for their own troops.

Five Israeli soldiers were confirmed killed in the incident which happened in Jabalia. An additional seven troops were wounded, with three listed in serious condition. 

Soon after it happened social media images from Israel showed that there was a significant medical evacuation underway, with military helicopters seen transporting wounded to hospitals inside Israel. 

The tanks had reportedly been taking heavy fire just before the friendly fire incident, with the Jerusalem Post providing the following details:

Tank Unit 82’s soldiers said that they saw a potential threat, the barrel of a weapon, emerge from the three floor battalion headquarters, which was only 10-20 meters away from them. The soldiers hit by the tank were from Unit 202 is a Haredi-integrated unit. 

It was unclear why they did not recognize the battalion headquarters. However, the IDF said that the tanks had taken over the junction in Jabalya around 9:00 am and that the Battalion headquarters deputy commander had only arrived many hours later.

On Thursday the IDF listed the young troop deaths – which included an officer with the rest being among enlisted ranks – as follows: Capt. Roy Beit Ya’akov, 22, from Eli; Staff Sgt. Gilad Arye Boim, 22, from Karnei Shomron in Samaria; Sgt. Daniel Chemu, 20, from Tiberias; Sgt. Ilan Cohen, 20, from Carmiel; and Staff Sgt. Betzalel David Shashuah, 21, from Tel Aviv.

While it’s still under investigation, another local media outlet reported the following:

The tank forces had arrived at the area in the morning, and several hours later, the paratroopers reached the area and established a post in the building. Later in the evening, another group of paratroopers reached the area and notified two of the tanks there that they were entering the building.

Likely this will further energize angry anti-Netanyahu protesters who say he has not done enough to actually get the Israeli hostages back, but instead has prioritized the brutal fight to eliminate Hamas.

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