Haaretz newspaper published a report on Sunday in which it refuted much of the Israeli narrative about the attack carried out by members of Hamas and other factions on October 7th, on military barracks and Jewish towns surrounding the Gaza Strip. The summary of the report stated that the attack was accompanied by many crimes against Jewish and Arab civilians from the population of Israel, but the story about it “was characterized by huge exaggerations, promoted by senior military officials, politicians, and civil society activists, including the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife, and numerous ministries and government departments.”

The report, conducted by journalists Nir Hasson and Lisa Rozobsky, says: “Politicians, officers in the Israeli army, volunteers from ZAKA - the Disaster Victim Diagnosis Association - and activists on social networks have been talking since October 7 about terrible stories committed by Hamas members. Mostly, the talk is about true testimonies based on a lot of evidence, but among the public in Israel and around the world, incorrect stories and narratives are also spreading.” The report warns that this exaggeration of events “provides ammunition for those who deny the massacre.”

The report stated, “The men of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the residents of Gaza who entered Israel committed crimes against humanity. They brutally killed about 1,200 people, most of them unarmed civilians, and kidnapped about 240 civilians and soldiers, including the elderly, children, and teenagers” and women. All of this is undisputed, but (several parties published baseless information about what happened that day).”

Severed children's heads

Among the accounts refuted by the report are those that talked about “finding dozens of bodies of children who had been beheaded.” It said: “This description appeared in a report by the I24 News network, for example, in which the writer described that one of the officers in the field told her that there were more than  40 children who were killed, the vandals beheaded some of them.” He added: “We learned from this network that the reports about the atrocities and the number were based on the testimonies of officers who evacuated bodies in the cover towns,” and that they were collected on a tour of foreign correspondents accompanied by the Israeli army spokesman four days after the outbreak of the war, and that similar numbers were also repeated in Testimonials of ZAKA members.

The report continued: “This description was quoted on social networks, and sometimes the story was changed so that it became (the bodies of children were burned or the bodies of children were hung on a rope). For example, the official channel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published testimonies from Colonel Golan Bach of the Home Front Command, according to which the burned bodies of eight children were found in one of the houses. On the account of the Prime Minister’s Office on the X Network, pictures resembling drawings were published with a comment: (These are terrible pictures of children who were killed and burned by the monsters of Hamas). The post stated that (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed these pictures to the US Secretary of State. (Anthony Blinken).

Similar descriptions were also published by an officer in the Israeli army. A few days ago, the correspondent in “Sabbat Square,” Yishai Cohen, met with Lieutenant Colonel Yaron Buskila of the Gaza Division. “The last one talked about children being hung on a clothesline.” Things similar to his statements were quoted by right-wing man Joel Vaknan in “X”. Cohen commented that after publishing his response, he noticed that the story was inaccurate: “Why would an army officer make up such a terrible story?”

It turns out, according to Cohen, that these descriptions are actually incorrect. During the massacre, Hamas terrorists abused the bodies, especially the bodies of soldiers. There were cases of beheadings and organs being cut off, but National Insurance Institute data on the dead and information collected from the site of the massacre, from leaders in the kibbutzim and from the police, showed that on October 7, one child, Mila Cohen, from Kibbutz Be'eri, and her father, Ehud, were killed.

An undated photo published by the Israeli Forum for Hostages and Missing Families shows Emily Hand (9 years old) from Kibbutz Beeri among 13 Israelis released by Hamas on November 25 (AP)

According to the National Insurance Institute, five other children also died on the same day: Omer Siman Tov Kedem (4 years old) and his twin sisters, Erbil and Shahar (6 years old), who were killed in Nir Oz, and the child Yazan bin Jamaa from Arara in the Negev, who Eytan Kavshtar (5 years old) was wounded by a missile attack, and he was killed along with his parents and brother near Safir College. In addition to them, 14 boys aged 12-15 years were also killed. Three of them were caused by a missile and not in the area of the massacre in the Gaza envelope. Some other children were killed in or near their homes, most likely along with other members of the family. Until now we do not know of a scene in which children from several families were discovered killed together. Hence, it becomes clear that even Netanyahu’s descriptions mentioned in his conversation with US President Joe Biden, according to which Hamas terrorists “took dozens of children, handcuffed them, burned them, and executed them,” are not descriptions that accurately agree with the picture of reality.

Paramedics exaggerations

The report adds that some incorrect descriptions were published by ZAKA members, one of whom spoke about another terrible scene, which was the discovery of the body of a woman he found on Kibbutz Be'eri. Her stomach was open and the fetus that was tied by the umbilical cord was also found stabbed. He repeated this testimony in a conversation with Haaretz, and even said that he saw this scene in the kibbutz, and “there was a lot of blood.” He added: “When we moved her, we saw that her stomach was open, the knife was near her, and the fetus was tied to the umbilical cord. She was shot from behind.”

The paramedic added that he found the woman near the house, and in the safe room he found a 6 or 7-year-old child who had been shot. The Haaretz report confirms that among those killed in Be'eri there were no children aged 6 or 7 years, and that the story of the pregnant woman was completely fabricated.

Netanyahu's wife and the kidnapped pregnant woman

The report touched on another story promoted by Netanyahu’s wife, about which she sent a letter to the wife of US President Jill Biden, in which she said that “one of the women who was kidnapped to the Gaza Strip is nine months pregnant, and that she was born in (Hamas) captivity.” On social networks, a photo of the kidnapped woman, whose name is Netvari Mulkan, was published, and it turned out that she was a Thai citizen.

In a “Magazine” report, Netafari Molkan’s colleagues, her employer, and her family members denied that she was pregnant. When Mulkan was released last Saturday, it was confirmed that she was not pregnant at all. The army also does not yet have any information about a kidnapped pregnant woman. The security apparatus is treating this story as a baseless “rumor.” From the Prime Minister's Office, no answer was received.

Baby in the oven

Another story published a few weeks ago was particularly harsh; The president of the Relief Union Society, Eli Bear, spoke of a child who was put into an oven and burned to death. Bear spoke in these details at a donor conference in the United States. From there, this story spread to the point that it was published at the beginning of this month in the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, in which the child became, according to the report, “several children”, but this story is also incorrect. Mila Cohen was the only child killed in the “massacre,” and the police do not have any testimony about the body of a child that meets these signs.

Source: Arab48