Tag: friendly fire

An elderly Israeli woman abducted by Hamas during the group’s October 7 attack was likely gunned down by an IDF aircraft, an internal military probe has found. To date, Tel Aviv has offered few details about other captives who may have been killed by friendly fire.

The 67-year-old grandmother, Efrat Katz, was taken hostage from the Nir Oz Kibbutz during Hamas’ surprise assault on Israel last year. Footage of her kidnapping showed the woman squeezed into the bed of a truck alongside her daughter and two grandchildren, a harrowing clip that would mark some of Katz’s final moments.The results of an internal Israeli military probe were published on April 5, acknowledging the IDF not only “failed to protect civilians” at the kibbutz, but had inadvertently contributed to the carnage.

“It appears that during the battles and the airstrikes, one of the combat helicopters that took part in the fighting fired at a vehicle that had terrorists in it, and, in retrospect, according to the evidence, it turned out that there were also hostages in it,” the investigation found. “As a result of the shooting, most of the terrorists manning the vehicles were killed, and apparently the late Efrat Katz.”

However, the probe concluded that because the hostages “could not be distinguished” from Palestinian fighters during the IDF counterattack, the helicopter crew was not at fault for Katz’s death. For the airmen, “the shooting was defined as shooting at a vehicle with terrorists,” the report continued.

According to Al Jazeera, Katz’s daughter and two grandchildren survived the attack, and were later freed following a prisoner exchange agreed with Hamas in November. The Palestinian armed group kidnapped more than 200 people on October 7 – among them Israeli soldiers and civilians in addition to foreign nationals – with around half of them released as part of last year’s deal.

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The Israeli military implemented the “Hannibal Directive” during Hamas’ attack on 7 October, killing some of its own civilians and soldiers to prevent Hamas from taking them as captives back to Gaza, according to an investigation by Israel’s leading newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, which will be published in full on 12 January.

The Hebrew edition of the paper wrote on 11 January that “one of the revelations revealed in the investigation is that at noon on October 7, the IDF [Israeli army] ordered all of its combat units in practice to use the ‘Hannibal Procedure’ although without clearly mentioning this explicitly by name.”

The order was to stop “at all costs any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, that is, despite the fear that some of them have abductees,” the paper wrote.

The Times of Israel described how the Hannibal procedure, or directive, “allows soldiers to use potentially massive amounts of force to prevent a soldier from falling into the hands of the enemy. This includes the possibility of endangering the life of the soldier in question in order to prevent his capture.”

A previous Haaretz investigation of the directive concluded that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

During the 7 October attack, Hamas and other Palestinians successfully took some 240 Israeli soldiers and civilians from the settlements (also known as kibbutzim) and military bases back to Gaza as captives. 

Hamas hoped to exchange them for the thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, held in Israeli prisons.

Hamas used the Toyota pick-up trucks and motorcycles with which they entered Israel, as well as cars stolen from the settlements, to take Israeli captives back to Gaza. Some were also taken to Gaza on foot and even in carts pulled by tractors by other Palestinians who crossed into Israel after the Hamas fighters breached the border fence.

According to Yediot Ahronoth, about a thousand “terrorists and infiltrators” were killed in the area between the settlements and the Gaza Strip.

But the paper added it is not clear at this time how many of the Israeli abductees were killed due to the activation of the Hannibal directive: 

“In the week after the attack, soldiers of elite units checked about 70 vehicles that were left in the area between the settlements and the Gaza Strip. These are vehicles that did not reach Gaza, because on the way they were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed.”

As journalist Dan Cohen reported, the Israeli military killed Efrat Katz, age 68, as she was being taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz to Gaza on a cart pulled by a tractor on 7 October. Her daughter, Doron Katz-Asher, and two granddaughters, Raz, age 2, and Aviv, age 4, were also in the cart. 

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Israel’s Mossad spy agency director David Barnea has been dispatched back to Doha amid reports that the Netanyahu government is open to pursuing a second temporary truce and hostage deal. 

Axios describes it as “the first meeting between senior Israeli and Qatari officials since the collapse of the seven-day ceasefire that led to the expansion of the Israeli military operation to southern Gaza.” Looming in the background is intensifying pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu in the wake of Friday’s ‘friendly fire’ incident which killed three hostages who had been trying to escape Hamas captivity.

Talks are “just a beginning” is is likely to be “long, difficult and complicated” – according to a source speaking to Axios. CIA director Bill Burns and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel are also said to be part of efforts to revive talks. Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to complete Gaza operations which have the aim of eradicating Hamas.

But already at a time that hostage and victim’s families have led huge protests demanding more be done to secure the release of the over 100 captives that remain, both domestic and international pressure is at breaking point.

The new to emerge details made known by a preliminary military investigation are very ugly and will drive controversy against military and government decision-makers into overdrive. The three young men killed by IDF troop fire were shirtless, waving a white-flag and shouting in Hebrew when they were gunned down by Israeli forces. According to the Times of Israel based on military statements:

Three hostages shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood Friday were shirtless, and one of them was carrying a stick with a makeshift white flag, the IDF said Saturday after an initial probe into the tragic incident.

Yotam Haim, Samar Talalka and Alon Lulu Shamriz managed to escape Hamas captivity before they were mistakenly shot dead by troops on Friday morning at around 10 a.m.

According to a senior officer in the Southern Command, citing an initial probe, the incident began after a soldier from Bislamach Brigade’s 17th Battalion stationed in a building identified three suspicious figures exiting a building several dozen meters away.

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Firsthand testimony by admittedly inexperienced Israeli tank operators reveals orders to open fire upon Israeli communities when Palestinian militants breached the fences encircling Gaza on October 7.

A glowing profile of an all-female tank company by Israel’s N12 News network contains admissions by the 20-year-old captain — identified only as ‘Karni’ — that she was ordered by a “panicked” soldier to open fire on homes in the Holit kibbutz whether they contained civilians or not. 

Ten Israelis were killed in Holit on October 7; no children were among the dead.

“The soldier points and tells me, “shoot there — the terrorists are there,”” the captain recounts in the newly-released footage, noting that when she asked “are there civilians there?,” her compatriot simply replied, “I don’t know,” and ordered her to “just shoot” a tank round into the buildings anyway.

Ultimately, she recalled, “I decided not to shoot” as “this is an Israeli community.” Instead, she said, “I fired with my machine gun at a house.”

While the Israeli government and its army of international propagandists have blamed Hamas alone for a range of grisly killings on October 7, along with unsubstantiated claims of rape, torture and beheading babies, the comments in N12’s report add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that shelling by Israeli tanks was responsible for many of the casualties incurred in Israeli kibbutzim. According to the soldiers interviewed, others killed by the tank company in question include supposed Palestinian militants whom they say they crushed to death with their vehicle.

“My driver spots two terrorists on the road and reports it,” the captain tells her N12 interviewer. When “I tell her to run them over, she simply runs over the terrorists and moves on,” she explains blithely.

The female tank company appears to have been trained on the least advanced vehicles in Israel’s arsenal, and given only border defense duties. In the chaos of the Hamas assault on October 7, they were forced into more advanced vehicles equipped with a remote controlled weapons system (RCWS).

In the N12 report, Brigadier General Raviv Mahmia admitted that taking on a band of militants in Kibbutz Holit was a “very complex” task for which the young tankers were “in many ways…not trained to fight.”

“They fired in Israeli communities, driving on plain roads,” he noted.

Reporting by The Grayzone has revealed that many of the bodies found burned beyond recognition inside southern Israel’s so-called Gaza envelope were likely victims of the Israeli military – which recent admissions seem to confirm. 

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Israel’s military received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on October 7. How many Israeli citizens said to have been “burned alive” were actually killed by friendly fire?

Several new testimonies by Israeli witnesses to the October 7 Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel adds to growing evidence that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as they fought to neutralize Palestinian gunmen.

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 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 noncombatants 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.

While being held by the Hamas gunmen, Porat recalled, “They did not abuse us. We were treated very humanely… No one treated us violently.”

She added, “The objective was to kidnap us to Gaza, not to murder us.”

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Since October 7, the day’s events have been shrouded in mystery. There are not only questions about the Israeli intelligence apparatus’s colossal failure to anticipate what was happening in the tightly besieged Strip or the quick collapse of their billion-dollar “Maginot Line” but also the details of what actually transpired in the military bases and settlements around the Gaza Strip. We know that, by common estimates, 1,400 Israelis were killed in the following few days, but we do not yet know the details of how.

Some reports are beginning to appear, including documentation of the killing of Israelis by Palestinian fighters, but there are a growing number of reports that indicate the Israeli military was also responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths on October 7 and the days after.

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