#haaretz

You've probably seen people online spouting nonsense like "Israel killed most of its own people on October 7th. The Hannibal Directive proves it. Hamas didn't do the massacre - Israel did."

Let's go over what the Hannibal Directive actually was, its status on 10/7/23, and how stories about it have been dishonestly spun.

The Hannibal Directive was issued in 1986. Here's what it actually said:

"א. בזמן מחטף הופכת המשימה העיקרית חילוץ חיילינו מידי החוטפים גם במחיר של פגיעה או פציעת חיילינו. ב. במידה ויזוהו החוטפים והחטופים ולא נענו לקריאות לעצור, יש לבצע ירי נק"ל (נשק קל), על מנת להוריד את החוטפים לקרקע, או לעצור אותם. ג. אם לא עצר הרכב או החוטפים, יש לירות לעברם ירי נשק קל בבודדת, במכוון, על מנת לפגוע בחוטפים גם אם המשמעות פגיעה בחיילינו."

"A. During an abduction, the main mission becomes rescuing our soldiers from the captors, even at the cost of harming or injuring our own soldiers. B. If the captors and captives are identified and do not heed calls to stop, use small arms fire to bring down the captors or halt them. C. If the vehicle or captors do not stop, use aimed small arms fire to hit the captors, even if that means harming our own soldiers."

This isn't particularly controversial in principle. A captured soldier becomes a massive piece of political leverage, a tool for extortion, and a severe threat to national security - and accepting the risk of injuring your own people during a rescue attempt is a standard, tragic reality of combat. The underlying logic is standard across professional militaries.

Note that the directive as written applied specifically to soldiers. That distinction matters when we get to October 7.

From its inception, the directive was controversial within Israel. Some commanders refused to pass it down, as they were permitted to do under the Spirit of the IDF booklet. In 2011, Chief of Staff Benny Gantz clarified that the directive did not authorize deliberately shooting a captured soldier - it aimed to stop terrorists from escaping with them, not to kill the hostage. The directive was revised several times, with legal reviews consistently recommending every effort be made to avoid harming soldiers who were hostages.

In 2016, Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot officially cancelled it.

It was long gone on 10/7/23.

A Haaretz investigation, though, identified three specific instances where local commanders invoked a Hannibal-style order at points along the Gaza border: at the Erez crossing, the Re'im army base, and the Nahal Oz outpost.

The orders were primarily aimed at striking the gaps in the border fence and vehicles moving back into Gaza to stop the mass transfer of hostages. Because Hamas was taking civilian hostages, not soldiers -local commanders were adapting a soldier-focused doctrine on the fly, in chaos, without official authorization. That context matters for understanding what actually happened.

So what does the evidence actually confirm?

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry confirmed at least 14 Israelis likely killed by IDF forces. The Be'eri incident (where a tank commander ordered fire on a house holding hostages, killing 13 of 14) is the most documented single case.

These deaths are real, they are serious, and the officers responsible should face accountability - that's the only acceptable reaction to a friendly fire incident.

At no point has any investigation found that the IDF deliberately targeted Israeli civilians.

Every documented IDF-caused death on October 7 occurred in the context of combat decisions made to stop Hamas from dragging hostages back into Gaza. These decisions were chaotic, unauthorized, and in some cases probably a bad call. A commander who orders fire on a vehicle he believes contains Hamas fighters and accidentally kills Israelis in the process has made a bad decision, but he has not committed a premeditated massacre of his own people.

There is no evidence -NONE WHATSOEVER - that the IDF identified Israeli civilians and chose to kill them. This claim exists solely to launder the responsibility of Hamas (and others from Gaza) for the atrocities visited upon Israeli civilians on 10/7/23.

The total October 7 death toll was approximately 1,200 Israelis. That number is documented and forensically verified. The 14+ deaths caused accidentally by the IDF are worth investigating and accountability should be sought- but they are not an alternative explanation for the massacre.

That's how Hamas supporters spun it.

In July 2024, when Haaretz published an investigation into Hannibal-style orders at those three military sites on October 7, this was journalism. Israeli reporters, using IDF documents and soldier testimony, holding their own military accountable for specific decisions made in specific locations.

The article did not claim Israel caused most of the deaths. It did not claim Hamas was innocent. It reported on a real institutional failure at the Erez crossing, Re'im base, and Nahal Oz outpost.

Within two weeks, that article had been shared over 16,000 times on X, almost entirely by accounts using it to argue that Israel, not Hamas, was responsible for the October 7 massacre.

Hamas supporters have elevated this sort of dishonesty to an art form: they take legitimate accountability journalism, remove every qualifier, delete the specific scope, and present it as proof of something the article explicitly does not claim and try to make the IDF responsible for the crimes committed by Hamas and other Gazans.

The people doing this aren't engaging with the Haaretz investigation. They're borrowing its brand as a prop to make the absurd allegation seem credible. It isn't - and anyone who actually read the article knows that.

The claim that Israel killed its own people on October 7 isn't a good-faith misreading of a complicated story. It's a conspiracy theory.

It takes a documented atrocity with 1,200 named victims, forensic evidence, and survivor testimony, and replaces it with a fairy tale where the Jews did it to themselves.

That's not skepticism. That's not "asking questions."

The people spreading this libel aren't engaging with the Haaretz story or the UN or any of the investigations they pretend to cite without having read them. They're using the language of accountability journalism to run interference for a massacre.

~6,000 people including Hamas, other militant groups, and Gazan civilians burned families alive, took 251 hostages, and committed widespread torture and sexual violence on October 7. That happened. The Hannibal Directive didn't make it happen. Israel didn't make it happen. Hamas made it happen.

They filmed themselves doing it, they livestreamed it, they called their families to brag about it, they celebrated it in Gaza, their leaders praised it and promised to repeat it. They want the credit for their massacre.

The Israeli military has been posting grotesque videos of dead Palestinians on a racist Telegram channel. It’s typical for the ‘anything goes’ platform. Representatives from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) admitted to running a notoriously violent and racist Telegram channel following an investigation from Haaretz.  On October 9, 2023, the Telegram channel “72 Virgins—Uncensored” started posting gore-filled photos and videos from the frontlines of Israel’s war on Gaza. An investigation from Haaretz revealed in December that the Israeli military ran the channel. The IDF initially denied the accusation but reversed course after an internal investigation, Haaretz reported on Sunday. It’s an unsurprising revelation that highlights the grotesque appeal of Telegram, and how governments increasingly use the platform to spread propaganda. Videos and images on the channel included the dead bodies of Palestinian civilians and resistance fighters alongside racist text. “Exterminating the roaches…exterminating the Hamas rats…Share this beauty,” one post said above pictures of captured Palestinians. Another post showed an Israeli soldier dipping their gun into a liquid. “What a man!!!! Lubricates bullets with lard. You won’t get your virgins,” the text on the video said, according to a translation from Haaretz. In the past months, several unconfirmed videos have gone viral on social media purporting to show soldiers mocking Palestinians by dipping their bullets in pig fat, which is forbidden under Islam. Since October 7th, Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, where Israeli occupation forces have blocked almost all humanitarian aid from entering the densely-populated Palestinian territory.

Some quotes:

"What a man!!!!! Greases bullets with lard. You won't get your virgins."

""Garbage juice!!!! Another dead terrorist!! You have to watch it with the sound, you'll die laughing."

“Haaretz deliberately mistranslated its source material to feed an English-speaking audience a lie,” wrote military researcher Andrew Fox of the Henry Jackson Society, slamming the Israeli daily’s June 27 article, “It’s a Killing Field: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid.” He continued: “Then it pieced together half-truths, one-sided quotes, and convenient omissions to create a cartoon villain narrative of Israeli brutality, even when its sources contradicted that story.” 

Misrepresenting Hebrew sources for a foreign audience is a longstanding Haaretz specialty. The more spectacular the lie, the bigger the splash the nominally read Israeli newspaper makes in the international arena.

Recall the highly shocking and equally false 2012 headline, “Survey: Most Israeli Jews support apartheid regime in Israel,” later retracted. Then there was Haaretz‘s 2013 abysmal reporting, including truncated quotes, fueling false international coverage claiming Israel forcibly sterilized Ethiopian women. This fantastical story also crumbled under scrutiny and ended with a whimper in the form of a series of CAMERA-prompted corrections.

Special for English-speakers, Haaretz even routinely mistranslates its own Hebrew coverage. The tradition of introducing into the English edition false information defaming Israel, or erasing reporting on Palestinian or Arab belligerency or other wrongdoing which had appeared in the media outlet’s parallel Hebrew coverage, is so institutionalized and longstanding that CAMERA’s “Haaretz, Lost in Translation” seminal tracker has reached its bar mitzvah year.

Haaretz‘s “Killing Field” story is its coming-of-age “lost in translation” episode. Covering deadly shootings near the four Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution sites, Haaretz advances from tales of apartheid aspirations and sterilizations to Israel’s deliberate killing of hungry, harmless Palestinians lining up for food aid.

In their article, Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg rely on numerous anonymous sources to allege that Israeli soldiers have received orders to fire on unarmed civilians who pose no threat to troops.

As of yesterday, the following example of muddled, intentionally misleading reporting and erroneous translation appeared on Haaretz‘s English-language site (screenshot at left June 29):

A senior officer whose name repeatedly comes up in testimonies about the shootings near aid sites is Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of the IDF’s Division 252. Haaretz previously reported how Vach turned the Netzarim corridor into a deadly route, endangered soldiers on the ground, and was suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorization.

The Hebrew version, in contrast, clearly states that the unit of Brig. General Yehuda Vach, about whom Haaretz previously reported as being responsible for the Netzarim corridor becoming a deadly route, does not operate in the area of GHF sites, three of which are located in southern part of the strip, and one of which is in central Gaza.

The Hebrew states (CAMERA’s translation): 

Vach’s division is not the unit which operates in the area. It is responsible for northern Gaza, and therefore Vach’s guidelines apply to looting of the U.N.’s aid truck and not the distribution centers.

Thus, according to the Hebrew edition, Vach doesn’t operate or have authority over the “killing field” in question. His relevance to the story is therefore tangential as opposed to evidential. Why, then, did Haaretz, in both languages, nevertheless misleadingly report that his “name repeatedly comes up in testimonies about the shootings near aid sites”? Why devote multiple paragraphs to the Brigadier General who is not part of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation story, suggesting – despite the facts to the contrary – that the senior figure with a reportedly spotty record is somehow relevant to the GHF incidents? Worse, why does the English edition state the exact opposite as the Hebrew, falsely claiming that Vach, among others, does have responsibility for the GHF areas?

In response to communication from CAMERA, editors implemented a stealth change to the English edition, adding the following bolded text to the article:

Vach’s division is not the only one operating in the area. It’s responsible for northern Gaza, and therefore Vach’s policy is relevant to those who loot UN aid trucks, and not GHF sites. [Emphasis added.]

But mistranslation of the word “yechida” (יחידה) as “only” instead of (military) “unit,” still remains, maintaining an inherent contradiction in the English edition reporting: On the one hand, Vach operates in the area. On the other hand, he doesn’t.

Moreover, the headline of the English edition states as fact a disputed charge: “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid.” The Hebrew headline, in contrast, qualifies the allegation, properly attributing it to its (anonymous) sources, as opposed to simply stating the disputed accusation as fact: “Combat soldiers testify: IDF is deliberately shooting towards Gazans next to aid centers.” (CAMERA’s translation.)

Haaretz has in the past corrected reporting which had falsely depicted disputed charges stated as fact, with no attribution. Though CAMERA has requested a correction of the headline which states as fact that soldiers were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans, editors have yet to set the record straight.

In addition, while anonymous sources are usually considered a last resort in journalism, the article is not only riddled with them, but the English edition went one step further, featuring an anonymous quote in the headline (“It’s a Killing Field”).

Furthermore, the Hebrew subheadline makes clear that the officers and soldiers alleged that they received orders to shoot towards (“לעבר”) Gazans (as opposed to “at,” as stated in the English) in order to disperse them (“כדי להרחיקם”). The subheadline in English makes no mention of the intention to disperse the crowds, reinforcing the disputed and shocking notion of a “killing field,” in which soldiers are blindly opening fire with the intention to kill. 

Finally, while the subheadline of the Hebrew edition clearly states that the army has rejected the allegations, the English edition cites only a denial from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yisrael Katz, ignoring the army’s denial, which is the denial which carries more weight. Thus, the Hebrew subheadline rightly notes (CAMERA’s translation):

The IDF spokesman stated following the publication of the article: “There is no IDF directive whatsoever to deliberately shoot civilians.”

A newspaper report published in Hebrew and English quoting Israeli soldiers saying commanders have ordered them to shoot at unarmed hungry crowds of people in Gaza trying to reach food distribution sites prompted a scathing response by Israel's prime minister on Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement calling the Haaretz report "blood libel."

"These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], the most moral military in the world," they added.

Gaza's Health Ministry says more than 500 people have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded by Israeli forces while seeking food aid in the past month.