The Israeli government is guilty of the deliberate death of Israeli civilians

Jan 23, 2025
Israeli flag flies over a small portion of the vehicles that were attacked and burned on 7 October in the Gaza Envelope border area with a blue sky ba Contributor: Sarit Richerson / Alamy Stock Photo Image ID: 2XM0F4X

The Israeli government has been accused of War Crimes including the murder and genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza. They should be indicted for the murder of Israeli civilians too.

Israeli prime-minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant have recently been charged as war criminals by the International Criminal Court for genocide against Palestinians.

But the Netanyahu government are also guilty of another heinous war crime. One which is reported openly in Israeli news media, but largely ignored in Australia except for ABC News – that of ordering the killing of many hundreds of Israeli civilians, who were murdered during the IDF response in Occupied Palestine on 7 October 2023.

The Hamas Incursion of 7 October 2023

The Israeli government claims more than 1,200 Israeli citizens were viciously killed and a further 240 were abducted as hostages into Gaza as the key victims of the Hamas incursion into Occupied Palestine on 7 October 2023. This horror mantra is endlessly repeated by western media and allies.

Israel retaliated to the Hamas incursion with intense bombing of Gaza for over a year, killing an identified 46,788 Palestinians, and wounded 110,450 others – mainly women and children in their homes.

Israel claims to target Hamas fighters exclusively, yet all of Gaza’s citizens have been victims of indiscriminate mass bombing. UN Agencies and others estimate that up to a quarter of a million Palestinian civilians are likely dead, most buried under the rubble of their destroyed apartments.

The enormity of Israel’s ‘revenge’ on Palestinians is disproportionate to the mantra of Israeli victims of October 7. Can we really believe the Israeli government, with 57 years of complete military control of Occupied Palestine and Gaza, embarked on a 470-day long vengeance spree, simply out of anger?

The Netanyahu government well understood international acceptance of Israel enlarging itself again by violent conquest would require an extreme event in which numerous Israelis were innocent victims of an exceptional brutality.

This is the scenario presented to the world – 1,200 Israelis killed and 240 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas insurgents on 7 Oct.

Yet, reports in Israeli news media, both from soldiers and from civilian survivors, give completely different accounts of the deaths of many Israeli civilians.

The ‘Hannibal Directive’, as described by Israeli news media.

The Israeli Military reluctantly admit a secret operational military order, “The Hannibal Directive”. Carthaginian general Hannibal committed suicide rather than be captured by ancient Rome. The Israeli military version is any captured Israeli soldier may be killed by the IDF along with his captors, to prevent military hostages. The Directive was initiated in 1986 and has been used subsequently about 8 times against single, or few Israeli military captives, over intervening decades.

In 1999, then IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz stated, “In certain senses, with all the pain that saying this entails, an abducted soldier, in contrast to a soldier who has been killed, is a national problem.” Mofaz did not deny the Directive’s existence, but hints politicians decide when it will be applied.

Yet a practical “oral law” version of the secret Directive for lower level officers has resulted in “prevent by all means” to be interpreted literally as “an IDF soldier is ‘better dead than abducted’“. Public discussion suggested ordinary Israeli’s opposed the Directive as ‘a cruel unjustifiable fate’.

These public pronouncements, denials by military leaders and the lethal interpretation by front-line officers create a mix of convenient deniability about when the murderous Directive is actually used. The expressions: ‘friendly fire’, ‘in error’, etc, often obscure whether deaths are deliberate, or truly accidental.

In 2016 The Times of Israel reported that the army had ‘cancelled’ the directive, yet Israeli soldiers are still intensely trained to apply it, if ordered. Thus, the secretive killing of several dozen IDF soldiers in earlier decades has convinced contemporary soldiers it is actually a military policy.

Use of the Hannibal Directive on 7 October 2023

In January 2024, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth concluded ‘the IDF had applied the Hannibal Directive from noon of October 7, ordering all combat units to stop “at all costs” any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza with hostages’. Accounts from numerous survivors and witnesses claim that military helicopters and army units killed Israeli captives along with Hamas fighters. Indeed, so intense are the accounts that use of the Hannibal Directive likely caused a significant proportion of deaths at all incursion sites.

British journalist Asa Winstanley collated numerous Israeli news reports and videos in, ‘How Israel Killed Hundreds of its Own People on October 7’, concluded ‘the reactivation and expansion of the Hannibal Directive that day was not a matter of rogue individual troops, or of simple chaos and confusion. It was a matter of policy.’ ‘Although the existence of the Hannibal Directive is an open secret inside Israel, its use on Israeli civilian targets was – as far as we know – unprecedented before 7 October 2023’.

In November 2023, Israeli Air Force colonel Nof Erez claimed it is not known whether Israeli warplanes and drones hit hostages while firing, on that day. He added, “The Hannibal Protocol, for which we have been conducting drills for the past 20 years, concerns a single vehicle with hostages in it. You know which part of the fence it goes through, which way on the road it heads to and even which route it takes.” “What we’ve seen here (on 7 Oct) is a mass Hannibal. There were many gaps in the fences. There were thousands of people in many different vehicles, both with and without hostages”.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz also collected testimonies from Israeli soldiers who were involved in the Hannibal Response on 7 October, finding that ‘Hannibal attacks’ on cars by the local Gaza division of the Israeli Army commenced as early as 7:18 am – only 52 minutes after the commencement of the offensive by Hamas. The division was then ordered at 11:22 am that: “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza”.

By midday, the Israeli military high command ordered the Hannibal Directive throughout the entire region, “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.” Presumably this last order could be used in any circumstance, such as at Kibbutz Be’eri, where tanks shelled Israeli houses to kill all occupants, despite platoons of IDF soldiers surrounding the entire kibbutz.

There is also a report of 630 casualties of the 7 October incursion who required hospital treatment, including 277 civilians and 353 soldiers, with gunshot (589) and or explosion (121) wounds. This report claims all are victims of Hamas terrorism, yet it is highly likely some injured civilians resulted from IDF accidents.

The accounts above from Israeli soldiers and civilian survivors come from the few prepared to speak out to the press, many accounts are at odds with government claims that Hamas killed all Israeli victims. Over time, Israeli society may ostracise whistle-blowers and witnesses to an alternative truth.

The Horror of the Hannibal Directive of 7 October 2023

The Hannibal Directive is meant to prevent capture of military hostages. Yet incredibly, the Directive was applied against Israeli civilian captives of Hamas, and indeed applied against anyone, captive or not, found in the incursion zone. Vehicles up to 10 km from incursion sites were destroyed by Israeli rockets and drones. How could IDF soldiers apply the Directive so ruthlessly? Targets were speeding cars which possibly contained Palestinians.

The Israel Military would not unilaterally decide to kill Israeli non-combatants, it must have been ordered to do so by the Israeli Government. Why activate the Directive against civilian hostages in the entire area of the Hamas incursion? Why not try to save Israeli civilian lives?

We have been told endlessly by our media that Hamas killed 1200 Israeli’s. The awful truth disclosed by Israeli media is that Israeli soldiers killed hundreds of the victims, both Israelis and their captors. Israeli military ordered Hannibal usedeven if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves.”

How many Israelis were killed by Israel?

Israel has created war monuments to the Hamas incursion, including the “Tekuma car cemetery” containing over 1,600 bombed, burnt-out Palestinian cars. Survivors attest that cars were overflowing, implying many thousands were killed.

In contrast, Israeli-owned cars destroyed during the incursion have been crushed by Israeli authorities and buried out of sight. The bodies of Israeli victims were rapidly buried for reasons of religious observance, and few autopsies were performed. Causes of death are unknown. Hamas is blamed for all deaths.

In reality, the Israeli press has documented the extraordinary application of the Hannibal Directive against captured civilians and soldiers, ordered by the Israeli government on 7 October.  Soldiers have admitted how they killed anyone in the area under Hannibal Directive orders.

The massacre of Israeli civilians was key to initiating subsequent IDF extermination of Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli deaths on 7 October now stand at 1,195, including 815 civilians, revealing indiscriminate IDF firing.

The Hannibal Directive is not a conventional military action; its legality is a fiction, its use is utterly exceptional. Israel has never killed its civilians before during any Palestinian uprising.

Israeli Hostages are living witnesses: ‘We were bombed by the IDF’

An Israeli hostage released from Gaza, Liat Atzili accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of betraying his office by “abandoning” Israeli captives. “The Israeli government has made it clear to us that human life is no longer sacred,” Atzili said. “In the name of the axis of lies and deceit, Netanyahu is thwarting the deal to free the hostages,” she added.

Some released hostages complained face-to-face to Netanyahu that the IDF had bombed them on the journey as captives into Gaza, and bombed them while they were being held. One freed hostage from the Nir Oz kibbutz told Netanyahu: “Every day in captivity was extremely challenging. We were in tunnels, terrified that it would not be Hamas, but Israel, that would kill us, and then they would say Hamas killed you.”

These returnees confirm they were subjected to Hannibal Directive attacks across the incursion area on 7 Oct., and continuously during their long captivity in Gaza. They are Israeli survivors, who expose the deadly intent of the IDF towards them from their moment of capture, until their release.

The vicious 7th October attack on Israelis by Hamas is a reality. Yet how monstrous for the Israeli government to order the murder of its own civilians. How monstrous to use the attack to commence genocide against all citizens of Gaza, a people held captive for 57 years, in order to occupy their land.

Netanyahu claimed the Hamas attack ‘was the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust’; yet the massacre occurred under Israeli government orders to kill anyone in the incursion area.

How many Jewish people were massacred by Israel itself? The military helicopter video link above illustrates random killing of anyone in their sights.

Share and Enjoy !