Illustrative Image
The news and the truth are not the same thing.
(Walter Lippmann)
Written by Julian Macfarlane, Tokyo based investigative journalist, writer, author, geopolitical and military analyst
Truth, Lies and the News
There have been many articles, even in the mainstream media, criticizing Israel and drawing attention to its vicious response to the “terrorist” attack of October 7.
The alternative media also initially focused on Israel’s disproportionate violence—in essence, its crimes against humanity.
But the media in general, have one very big “But”.
Because, you know, this October 7th attack. Which, you know, you have to keep repeating it was inhumane and atrocious and horrific and horrible. It killed 1400 people, 1200 of them men, women, children, grandmothers, babies, etc., was a horrible thing. Juan Cole
All stories depend on context—which may be true or fictional—but bias everything else.
The October 7 attack somehow frames the entire discussion. But was it “inhumane and atrocious and horrific and horrible”?
Was it in fact a real terrorist attack? Or was it a strategic military attack in which there was “collateral damage”?
Now it seems that many, perhaps even most of the deaths of unarmed civilians killed were at the hands of the Israelis themselves.
Such subtleties and nuances do not appeal to the mainstream media. Because:
- Hamas is a terrorist organization
- It just wants to kill Jews.
Those are the basic premises.
Early on the media was inundated with scenes of Israeli young people fleeing a rave— supposedly under fire from Palestinians in motorized paragliders. There were also accusations of rape—the beheading of babies, and the like—although that never happened.
The victims were popularly alluded to as “teenagers”— even though most were between the ages of 20 and 40—military age and trained as part of universal conscription.
Then came scenes of massive destruction of Israeli homes. More dead civilians, including women and children and the elderly. Oh, and of course babies.
Its fighters murdered, tortured and raped.
So says George Monbiot in a Guardian article that pretends to be evenhanded and balanced as Guardian articles always do.
The Israeli government hoped that such imagery would excuse the IDF using genocidal brute force to decimate the Palestinian population and drive the survivors out of Palestine to Egypt—with no hope of return. That was the Zionist plan all along.
In this campaign, Israel had the full support of the Biden administration and the State Department.
But, as I’ve often said, the truth leaks. The mainstream media is a roof to keep us dry. The alternative media are umbrellas.
But now the basement is full of dirty water that has flowed in from the gutters and cannot be ignored.
Raving Mad
Let’s start with the now famous rave.
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If you thought the music festival was attacked by guys in paragliders with machine guns— you’re wrong. Lots of people running. Big field. Big sky. But…no “paragliders’—more correctly no paramotors in sight. I have seen images of just one or two—buzzing about—slowly—apparently under attack by the local Zionist crows.
In point of fact, the crowd was alerted by sirens indicating incoming missiles. Hamas forces appeared only after as the young people reached the perimeter of the field and the protection of local militias from the nearby Kibbutz. A firefight started.
Did the Palestinians fire on the ravers?
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No doubt—once the ravers reached military protection: the kibbutz next door—Re’im—is also a military base.
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Given their ages, the ravers would soon be armed, especially if they made it as far as their cars where they undoubtedly had weapons.
Pandemonium
Below you see the ravers’ vehicles.
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Were these hit by Hamas missiles as the Israeli media suggest? Possibly. But maybe not.
Hamas does have some precision weapons such as drones now—but these are in short supply and reserved for hard targets like tanks, using shaped charges delivered from above.
The Gray Zone points out, that the charred bodies of ravers burned to death in their cars indicate hits by Hellfire missiles—which only Israel has—indicative of a panicked and discoordinated military response.
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All this speaks to pandemonium.
Death by friendly fire happens all the time in wartime—and militaries usually go to great lengths to avoid such incidents. But Israel’s Hannibal and Dahiya Directives establish a clear policy of killing Hamas fighters, even if it means killing your own.
The bodies shown here are too burnt to identify as friend or foe but from considering these directives, it does not matter. The Israeli directives express a lack of consideration for human life—first Palestinian—then as a logical consequence, Israeli.
Ultimately, when you devalue the lives of one group of human beings, you devalue the lives of all. But that has become as much of a feature of right-wing Zionist culture as it was of the Nazis.
The Hamas attackers took hostages from the rave and moved on—perhaps even saving those hostages’ lives by removing them from the field of fire.
Apache helicopters of the Israeli Air Force on October 7 blindly shot their citizens fleeing from the music festival:
Taking hostages—not lives
Killing civilians was clearly not Hamas’ goal—it wanted live bodies not dead ones—hostages—while simultaneously inflicting damage on Israel’s military and its overblown myth of military competence.
Before the ceasefire agreement, the Israelis held about 5,200 Palestinians in their prisons, including 33 women and 170 children under the age of 18, as well as the elderly and disabled. The only way to free those people was for Hamas to have their own hostages as trade.
Since the rave was not an anticipated target with the site only announced by social media a short time before to prevent it being banned, the real targets in this area were the Re’im and Kisufim kibbutzes—sources of hostages and also military bases.
Besides taking captives for barter, Hamas had to show the Zionists that they were militarily different from the Hamas of old, with new and more sophisticated capabilities.
Hamas today has evolved.
It is better organized, better armed, smarter, and more prepared. It is also less of a terrorist group than Irgun and other Zionist groups in Palestine before and during the Nakba.
After all, the Zionists had no claim on the land they coveted and stole—not then—not now. Hamas, by contrast, seek to take back what was stolen from them and to resist a brutal and demeaning occupation. That is not to say that they have not killed innocent civilians—just not on the scale of the Israelis – nor with the same brutality and cruelty. Israeli statistics reveal that most so-called “terrorist” attacks involve a single person—a “Palestinian”— on his own—acting more or less spontaneously.
The October 7 attack was something quite different—a well-planned, asymmetric attack—land, sea and air.
Targets
Here are some of the targets, with three identified as places of massacre—supposedly carried out by the attackers.
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But who killed who?
Hamas’ successes and taking of hostages prompted a hasty, desperate counterattack by the IDF—October 8 and 9th. It now seems an incontrovertible fact that the IDF executed its “Hannibal Directive” shelling houses where Hamas were sheltering with hostages, killing families inside along with the fighters—and then of course blaming the “terrorists”—even though the group doesn’t have the weaponry to create the kind of destruction you see in the photos.
This also tends to lend credence to the Israelis slaughtering a lot of their own people at the rave previously.
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Lies are the detritus of a broken culture.
Justin Podur in one of his many excellent articles, quotes Scott Ritter.
Israel’s lying to itself and the world because Israel doesn’t want the truth to come out about October 7, the absolute failure – political failure, military failure. And they definitely don’t want to talk about October 8. That’s the day they really don’t want to talk about. Because that’s the day that this undisciplined mob of Israeli Defense Force poured back into the settlements and slaughtered the settlers that were there… if they release the autopsies of all the bodies they picked up, you’ll find that the majority of them, more than the majority, were killed by 5.56mm rounds fired by Israel. There’s enough eyewitness testimony that supports this. And Israel doesn’t want to talk about this. (Scott Ritter)
They eliminated everyone, including the hostages…. There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling. (Witness testimony)
It seems now that at least half of the people killed in the Hamas raid—even perhaps much more than half—were killed by the Israeli military or paramilitary.
At least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble. (Haaretz)
The article was first published on Substack on November 6. To view the rest of the article please click here to follow the author on Substack .
