September 12,
2024
At the weekend
Australia’s national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC), featured a story reporting the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had indeed
carried out the Hannibal Directive, killing untold numbers of Israeli civilians
on Oct. 7.
Not Another Bomb: Solidarity Action with Gaza at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
It regurgitated
several reports in Israeli media dating back as far as January, which revealed
the use of the doctrine, interpreted as a license to kill Israeli soldiers
being taken hostage by the enemy.
In this case the
directive was used after Israelis, mostly civilians, were taken prisoner by the
Al-Qassam Brigades, either as they were being transported to Gaza or held
captive in their homes at kibbutzim in southern Israel.
The latest of
those reports, by Israeli newspaper Haaretz in July, revealed IDF commanders
had ordered captured soldiers to fire at three separate locations, explicitly
referencing the Hannibal Directive.
The ABC story
should not be seen as a sign of legacy media finally coming round to reporting
on Gaza truthfully.
Instead, the
story should be viewed as an example of establishment media’s propensity for
begrudgingly giving a nod to demonstrable facts only when needed.
In fact, the
belated reporting of Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive 11 months into a
genocide reveals a qualitative difference between a passive and subservient
mainstream media and an active and vital independent journalism earnestly
working in the public interest and in accord with the Genocide Convention, a
U.N. legal instrument that demands states take steps to stop genocide from
occurring.
It is telling
that the only original element in the ABC story were comments the broadcaster
sought from “Israeli philosopher” Asa Kasher, author of the IDF’s code of
ethics, who said use of the directive had been “legally wrong and morally
wrong.”
The directive
had supposedly been revoked in 2016 after Israel’s attorney-general said
killing a hostage was prohibited.
The ABC’s use of
Kasher as a salient voice is typical of the manner in which the way a story is
framed serves to obscure the nature of Israel’s colonial domination and the
illegality of its occupation.
It also gives a
type of balance to the story that keeps the broadcaster safe from the worst
excesses of Zionist lobbying, while setting the narrow parameters of acceptable
criticism of Israel.
Although Israel
is responsible for deliberately killing possibly hundreds of its own citizens
during its response to Oct. 7, this was presented by Kasher as an aberration, a
scandalous lack of professional standards of an army bound by an ethical code
within a democratic state.
Key Act of
Avoidance
Hence, what the
ABC story avoided doing was pointing out that Israel falsely blamed Hamas for
killing 1,400 civilians, the original inflated figure it used before it was
revised down to under 1,200, as part of a disinformation campaign to demonise
the resistance group and dehumanise Gazans in general in the wake of Operation
Al Aqsa Flood.
That figure of
1,200 killed solely by Hamas is still routinely reported by corporate media.
[Kamala Harris in her debate with Donald Trump last night repeated the
disinformation, saying Hamas had killed all 1,200 Israelis.]
Other elements
of this propaganda included false accounts of dozens of babies beheaded, others
ripped from the womb or cooked alive in ovens, as well as systemic rape and
horrific disfigurement of women by resistance fighters.
These stories,
devised by Israeli military and political figures and laundered by mainstream
media, helped whip up an orgy of hate and revenge and frenzied support within
Israeli society for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblical injunction to
commit genocide against an occupied population under siege.
The propaganda,
crudely calibrated to appeal to a deep-seated Orientalism within the West,
including a fear of barbarous, irrational Muslims murdering Europeans in the
most savage fashion, sought to condition the public to accept Israel’s
erroneous right to defend itself in whatever way it saw fit.
Led by the
United States, Western governments spoke with one voice after Oct. 7, giving
diplomatic cover to atrocities that may yet result in some leaders facing
charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
This was the
framing by independent journalists at outlets like Electronic Intifada, The
Grayzone and Consortium News and their reports were written at the time when
challenging the dominant narrative was critical.
The ABC report
said some testimonies from Israeli civilians and military personnel said that
Israeli forces responding to the Hamas attack had killed Israelis, but that
those making such statements were condemned. However, it added, there followed
more testimonies and Israeli media reports confirming it was true.
That paragraph,
with its reference to the “condemnations” of the testimonies, was the nearest
the ABC journalist came to explaining why their outlet had not reported the
Hannibal Directive’s use before now — external pressure.
From Option to
Imperative
The doctrine,
written in 1986 in response to the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon,
gave the IDF an option of taking a risk of killing soldiers when attacking
their hostage-takers. Over time it evolved into a strategic imperative of
killing their own as a better option than having them taken prisoner.
It was clear why
Hamas took 251 hostages back to Gaza on Oct. 7, according to Israel. In 2011,
Hamas swapped one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for more than 1,000 prisoners.
No doubt the Hamas leadership wanted to use them to bargain over the thousands of
Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli dungeons, some 9,940 as of June,
according to human rights organisations.
The ABC news
piece acknowledged the veracity of Israeli media reports that the IDF
dispatched attack drones, fired hellfire rockets and 30mm cannons from dozens
of helicopters at vehicles that were driving away from the Nova Music Festival
and that tanks fired into houses at Kibbutzim as resistance fighters gathered
up hostages.
It quoted former
Air Force Colonel Nof Erez, who had told a Haaretz podcast:
“This was a mass
Hannibal. It was tons and tons of openings in the fence, and thousands of
people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without.”
His comments
followed early reports in January in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, which said
IDF pilots attacked vehicles returning to Gaza despite a fear they might
contain hostages.
Reporter Yoav
Zeitoun stated:
“Twenty-eight
fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in
their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm. We are talking about hundreds of
30-millimetre cannon mortars and Hellfire missiles.
The frequency of
fire at the thousands of terrorists was enormous at the start, and?only at a
certain point?did the pilots begin to slow their attacks and carefully choose
the targets.”
He said tank
officers also confirmed they applied their own interpretation of the directive
when firing on vehicles returning to Gaza.
Another
journalist, Ronen Bergman, writing for the same newspaper in January, said 70
vehicles were destroyed by Israeli tanks and firing from aircraft killing
everyone inside.
He said the IDF
“instructed all
its fighting units… to stop ‘at all costs’ any attempt by Hamas terrorists to
return to Gaza, using language very similar to the original ‘Hannibal
Directive,’ despite repeated assurances by the security establishment that the
procedure has been cancelled.”
The ABC pointed
out that Israeli civilians survived Israeli forces firing on them and killing
other hostages during at least two incidents, repeating testimonies of Kibbutz
survivors who said they had been fired on by the IDF, from a helicopter at Nir
Oz and from tank shelling at Be’eri.
Timing &
Complicity
The BBC, CNN and
other Western media institutions have yet to follow the ABC in acknowledging
the Hannibal Directive was used on Oct. 7. Given the reliability of eyewitness
accounts and statements of military officials featured in Israeli media and
disseminated by Western independent journalists, those stories are inevitable
but remain a matter of timing.
Acknowledging
that Israel knew its own forces had slaughtered its own citizens — just as it
is doing by killing Israeli hostages amid its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza —
risks removing a key building block of Israel’s justification for annihilating
the basic means of survival in Gaza in its “war against Hamas.”
As the IDF
responded to the ABC’s request for a response to its story:
“The IDF is
currently focused on eliminating the threat from the terrorist organisation
Hamas. Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.”
Media
self-censorship is time-dependent, with omission and obfuscation useful and
necessary for a particular period, according to the agenda it serves, in this
case, an ethnic cleansing not yet fully complete.
Eventually news
leaders, either to save credibility or remain relevant, allow journalists to
report facts. And when that happens, foreign policy settings of Western
governments typically dictate the depth and pace of disclosure.
The ABC story
points to a cowardice among newsroom leaders, wary of a backlash from the
Israeli lobby and flack from a sub-imperial Australian government zealously
aligned with U.S. foreign policy if the dominant narrative isn’t adhered to.
Their approach
contrasts sharply with the courage of independent journalists, subject to
character assassinations and even arrest under anti-terror laws, as was the
case with journalists Richard Medhurst and Sarah Wilkinson recently in the U.K.
Their work remains contemporaneous instead of post facto, bringing information
into the public domain so that the destruction of the Palestinian people can be
halted while in motion, before fully enacted.
The Israeli army’s horrific massacre
of displaced families living in ramshackle tents in a so-called “humanitarian
zone” in the southern Gaza Strip is further proof that the international
community’s silence during the 11-month genocide is encouraging Israel to carry
out its crimes.
The latest mass killing fuelled by
the international community’s refusal to act occurred in the Strip’s al-Mawasi
Khan Yunis area, which the Israeli army had designated a “safe zone”. Initial
investigations conducted by Euro-Med Monitor reveal that on Tuesday 10
September, after midnight, Israeli warplanes dropped three American-made MK-84
bombs on a group of displaced people sleeping in their tents in the Mawasi
area. The explosions created three holes several metres deep and in diameter,
burying about 20 tents with the families still inside.
Israel’s use of multiple highly
destructive bombs on a densely populated area full of displaced people—and its
consequent killing of sleeping civilians—is unjustifiable, whether or not its
claims of the presence of armed factions in the area are accurate.
Since the displaced people’s tents
were situated in a region with sandy dunes, many of them—including tents with
entire families inside—were buried beneath the sand. The initial casualty toll,
counting both the dead and the wounded, is over 60. The Israeli army’s
intention to kill the greatest number of Palestinian civilians possible is
evident in its use of American bombs with a wide destructive capacity in an
area full of tents housing displaced people. It should be noted that no
evacuation warnings were issued prior to the bombing.
This massacre comes only one month
after Israeli forces bombed Gaza City’s Al-Tabi’in School, killing over a
hundred Palestinians.
Israel remains bound by the
regulations of international humanitarian law, particularly the requirements to
protect civilians and adhere to the principles of distinction, proportionality,
and military necessity, i.e. to take necessary precautions. This involves
deciding how military operations are to be conducted and what kind of weaponry
is to be employed in order to reduce the number of civilian casualties.
The shameful silence and
indifference surrounding these unprecedented massacres, which blatantly and
repeatedly target civilians with the clear intention of exterminating
Palestinians in large numbers, serves as a green light for Israel to continue
committing such atrocities.
The United States is complicit in
this individual crime, as well as in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, because
it continues to supply Israel with weapons, despite knowing that the Israeli
army uses these massively destructive weapons to regularly kill hundreds of
civilians.
Israel’s bombing strategy reveals a
deliberate policy to target Palestinian civilians across the entire Gaza Strip;
spread fear among them; deny them stability or shelter, even for brief periods
of time; force them to repeatedly relocate to new shelters; subject them to
life-threatening conditions; and ultimately destroy them. The bombing continues
throughout the entire Strip, with Israel targeting places designated as
humanitarian areas, mainly shelter centres, including those set up in UNRWA-run
schools.
Civilians in the Gaza Strip are
paying the price every day for Israeli military attacks that seriously violate
the rules of international humanitarian law, especially the principles of
distinction, proportionality and military necessity.
As part of their international
obligations, all nations must put an end to Israel’s war crimes and crimes
against humanity in the Gaza Strip; safeguard civilians there; ensure that
Israel abides by international law and the rulings of the International Court
of Justice; and impose effective sanctions on Israel by halting all forms of
military, financial, and political cooperation and support. This includes an
immediate stop to all arms sales, exports, and transfers to Israel, including
export licences and military aid.
All nations that cooperate with
Israel in committing crimes by providing it with any kind of direct support or
assistance must be held accountable, most notably the United States. Giving aid
and engaging in contractual agreements with Israel relating to the military,
intelligence, politics, law, finance, and the media, among other domains that
might help its crimes continue, is enabling Israel to commit its atrocities
against Palestinians.
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