10/7 Myths Debunked

Yesterday, was the second anniversary of the 10/7 attack in which 1,200 Israelis were killed.  It was a shocking traumatic event for Israelis in general, and the families of the dead and hostages in particular.

But it has been exploited in order to wage a genocide against an entire people.  The enormity of 10/7 pales in comparison to the savagery and mass slaughter of the following two years. Bibi Netanyahu and others who’ve exploited the dead on behalf of personal political interests have desecrated their lives.

Hayyim Katsman was one of the victims of 10/7.  He earned a PhD from the University of Washington in Middle East studies.  He was an Israeli dissident, absolutely opposed to the government’s policies and committed to Palestinian rights.  He once invited me to speak before a University class he taught, which was how we met.  While it is a terrible tragedy that someone deeply committed to the Palestinian cause paid the ultimate sacrifice, Hayyim would never want his death to serve as an excuse for genocide.  Never.

The University’s Stroum Center held a panel discussion devoted of Hayyim’s academic work and legacy.  It was a fitting tribute to his memory.  But I wonder if the University would have held such an event for a Palestinian PhD killed in Gaza.  In fact, it would be almost impossible for such a person to attend the University at all, because Israel has laid siege to the enclave for the past 20 years. Almost no one can leave, especially those seeking to study abroad. An exception is those Palestinians who’ve been recruited as informants by the Shin Bet.  They and their relatives may travel to Israel for urgent medical treatment.

Media myths:

False: Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on 10/7.

True: Israel and Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on 10/7

Israeli military forces invoked the Hannibal Directive as they repulsed Hamas attacks. It directs the IDF to kill Israelis who fall hostage. It is intended to minimize the number of Israeli soldiers captured by the enemy, which in turn leads to prisoner exchanges of captured Palestinian resistance fighters.  Until 10/7, it was never invoked to permit killing Israeli civilians.

Israeli media reports confirm that IDF helicopter pilots fired missiles at vehicles containing Israeli hostages which were traveling toward Gaza.  They did so repeatedly and the pilots confirmed that they killed many of the passengers and did so knowingly.  One of the pilots interviewed on Israeli TV said that he did so following the Hannibal protocol.

In another incident, IDF Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram (the “Butcher of Be’eri”) commanded a tank to fire directly into a Kibbutz home in which he knew Hamas kidnappers and an Israeli family were sheltering.  13 of the 18 Israelis were killed in this incident. An IDF “investigation” cleared him, saying he acted ““professionally and responsibly.” Doubtless, he too acted in the name of Hannibal.  Hiram was promoted in rank and hailed as a hero. The dead civilians? An afterthought, if that. Sacrificed on the altar of nation security.

Hundreds of concert goers were killed at the Nova festival.  Pictures show hundreds of cars incinerated. A Palestinian RPG cannot wreak such widespread destruction, even if a single rocket exploded an individual vehicle.  Survivors testify that IDF rockets or missiles were fired during the attack which caused this damage. They describe fleeing from the scene with IDF forces firing at them. Hannibal again. Many were trapped and killed by such attacks:

…Evidence now suggests that the majority of civilian deaths [at the festival] were likely inflicted by Israeli forces themselves. This was due to the overwhelming firepower employed by occupation forces – including from Apache attack helicopters – and because Tel Aviv issued the controversial Hannibal Directive to prevent Hamas from taking Israeli party-goers as captives.

In short, since Israel has performed almost no autopsies on victims, we cannot definitively ascertain who killed individual victims.  But without doubt, hundreds of them were killed not only by Hamas, but by Israeli forces.  This is barely acknowledged in global media reports.  I’ve reported it here as early as 10/9 and again over the past two years.

Israel’s killing of its own muddies the waters concerning the horrors of 10/7.  There is no compelling unitary narrative in which Hamas perpetrates an act of sheer evil; and Israel justifiably defends itself by retaliating against the perpetrators.  The Palestine-Israel conflict is never what it seems, especially regarding Israeli hasbara.  It is based on lies, obfuscation and deception. The unpleasant truth (for Israel) is that for every Palestinian 10/7 there are 100 Israeli Nakbas.  1,200 died on that day. 70,000 Palestinians died in the two  years since. Since 1948, 20,000 Israelis have been killed.  Yet the Gaza genocide has murdered nearly three times as many. At least 40,000 more died from 1948-2023.

More media myths:

False: 10/7 was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust or, alternatively, since the founding of Israel. Hamas did not attack Jews. It attacked Israelis.  To exploit this confusion is an Israeli stratagem to incite outrage and support false claims of anti-Semitism. No Palestinian, including Hamas, is at war with the Jewish people.  They are mounting resistance against a state engaged in crimes of apartheid and genocide against them.  The Jewish people are not perpetrating such acts. Israel is.

Another goal of such hasbara is to delegitimize Palestinian resistance.  But repeated UN General Assembly have asserted the right of Palestinians to armed resistance against Israel. I would argue further that Israel’s genocide along with its flagrant defiance of international bodies like the ICC and ICJ, has shredded the laws of war.  Why do they exist when they are ignored by Israel? What purpose can they now serve except as a nostalgic nod to a bygone era? Yet we hold the Palestinian resistance to a standard, while permitting Israel to get away with mass murder.

True: Several Israeli wars have cost far more lives. 6,300 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the 1948 War. 3,000 Israeli soldiers died in the 1973 War. 10/7 was the highest loss of life in a single day. But not since the Holocaust or any previous Israeli war.

October 7, 2023 was not “the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the holocaust.”

First, it was not the deadliest. That would be the anti-Jewish Argentinian Junta’s mass murder of thousands of Jews in the late 1970s & early 1980s. This campaign was — wait for it –… pic.twitter.com/Hcd9ztxjcV

— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) October 7, 2025

Finally, Israel invented numerous hoax stories about babies in ovens, women raped, burned alive, decapitated, etc. and insinuated it into global media discourse.  All of them turned out to be untrue. Israel produced “experts” who confirmed sexual crimes, claiming to have spoken to victims.  But they never offered any direct testimony from eyewitnesses or victims.  But perhaps because of the brutality of the attack, the world was prone to take what was spoon-fed to them by Israel and the media, at face value.  As anyone who follows Israel’s hasbara knows–never trust anything from Israeli leaders, generals or their pro-Israel apologists abroad.  You do so at your peril.

Pres. Joe Biden too repeated these falsehoods about beheaded babies. Congressmembers feeding at the Aipac money trough continue the litany of Hamas outrages unabated. Even Zohran Mamdani was suckered into disseminating these lies.

Hasbara follows the dictum attributed to Mark Twain: a lie is half way around the world before the truth gets its pants on.  The fall-out from 10/7–the lies and the myths–continue to inflame hatred and legitimize genocide.