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On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups attacked Israel, killing 1,180 Israelis, including 797 civilians, of whom 36 were children, 3,400 wounded, and 251 Israelis taken hostage in Gaza. Israeli women and girls were subject to rape, mutilation, and sexual violence. This attack was well-documented by the perpetrators who live streamed the attacks on head-mounted GoPro cameras, but conspiracy theories quickly proliferated claiming that the attacks were fabricated, exaggerated, or that they were false-flags.
As with Holocaust denial, a variety of strategies are used to attempt to discredit or downplay the extent and severity of the violence on October 7, 2023, including disputing the numbers, assigning blame to the victims, casting aspersions on the reliability and motivations of witnesses, accusing Jews of being collaborators in their own slaughter, and claiming that Israel or ‘Zionists’ permitted the attack as a pretext for invading Gaza. [1] [2] [3] [4] Both phenomena are rooted in antisemitism and are intended to serve as justification for antisemitic violence and hatred. [5] [6] The Network Contagion Research Institute has stated that “There’s a built-in audience that wants to deny that Jews are the victims of atrocity and furthers the notion that Jews are secretly behind everything”. [7] Gideon Levy has also compared it to Nakba denial. [8] The spread of denialism of the violence on October 7 also coincided with a widespread increase in outright Holocaust denialism across internet platforms, protest movements and parts of the media. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]
The well-documented and widespread sexual violence against Israeli women and girls on October 7th has been the subject of particular denialism. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
An Israeli legislative proposal approved by the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs aims to impose five-year prison sentences for individuals found denying the events of or supporting the attacks. [19]
The October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel was a well-documented terrorist attack. Evidence for the attack includes smartphone cameras, CCTV footage, and head-mounted GoPro cameras of Hamas militants who livestreamed their attack on Israel. However, denial of the attacks – including the spreading of falsehoods and misleading narratives that disputed that Hamas was responsible, or claims that minimized the violence that occurred – began to spread after the attack. [1] [20]
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz , malign actors spreading disinformation purposefully decontextualized their reporting to "falsely claim that Haaretz corroborated the false theory that the IDF committed mass killings of its own people". According to Shayan Sardarizadeh, BBC Verify's disinformation expert, the "denialist narrative" that "it was Israel that killed its own civilians on 7 October, not Hamas" has "sadly become prominent online". [21] Some incidents of friendly fire by IDF soldiers and kibbutz security teams against civilians attempting to flee or captured and brought into Gaza during the October 7 attacks, were corroborated later. [22] [23]
Researchers see parallels to disinformation surrounding the September 11th attacks, which some fringe groups argue was perpetrated by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Joel Finkelstein of Network Contagion Research Institute stated that "there's a built-in audience that wants to deny that Jews are the victims of atrocity and further the notion that Jews are secretly behind everything." He said efforts to say Israeli was responsible for October 7 are part of a broader strategy by antisemitic extremists to undermine Jewish suffering. [1]
The claims were found across the internet, including on the Reddit subforum 'LateStageCapitalism' and on publications critical of Israel like The Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone . They have also been popularized by right-wing Holocaust deniers like Owen Benjamin and far-right conspiracy theorists. The claims are based on cherry-picked evidence to push misleading narratives. [1] A Telegram instant messaging group, that had also shared content and conspiracies relating to foreign policy and the COVID-19 pandemic, had nearly 3,000 people on it in January 2024 that pushed content and conspiracies blaming the attack on Israel. [24]
In March 2024 the Israeli firm CyberWell, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor, analyze and combat antisemitism on social media, reported that the company had found about 135 separate posts that had been viewed by more than 15 million users that denied the October 7 attacks. The company found that the identified posts were almost half from Twitter, with others posted to Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. [25]
Emerson Brooking from the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council pointed to Holocaust denial as what may happen to October 7, despite copious real-time documentation of the attacks. [1]
Jennifer V. Evans has also tied the denialism surrounding October 7 to Holocaust denial. [20]
Gideon Levy has compared October 7 denial to Nakba denial, where many Israelis deny the atrocities their country inflicted on the Palestinians during Israel's creation. [8] Levy argues that many Israelis also deny killing of civilians during Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. [8]
Gil Gan-Mor said that both Nakba denial and the denial of the October 7 Hamas attacks must be combated through education. [26]
On February 5, 2024, the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs approved a bill aimed at penalizing denial of the October 7 attacks, imposing up to five years in prison for such acts. The bill, initiated by Yisrael Beiteinu MK Oded Forer, is aimed at individuals who deny the occurrence of the massacre or attempt to justify, praise, or support the acts carried out during the event. [19] The Association of Civil Rights in Israel said the law will have a "chilling effect on freedom of speech". [27]
The Popular Resistance Committees is a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups opposed to what they regard as the conciliatory approach of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah towards Israel.
This page is a partial listing of incidents of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2005.
In 2008 the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Hot Winter, also called Operation Warm Winter, in the Gaza Strip, starting on February 29, 2008 in response to Qassam rockets fired from the Strip by Hamas onto Israeli civilians. At least 112 Palestinians, along with three Israelis, were killed, and more than 150 Palestinians and seven Israelis were injured.
The Gaza War, also known as the First Gaza War, Operation Cast Lead, or the Gaza Massacre, and referred to as the Battle of al-Furqan by Hamas, was a three-week armed conflict between Gaza Strip Palestinian paramilitary groups and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 with a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict resulted in 1,166–1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths. Over 46,000 homes were destroyed in Gaza, making more than 100,000 people homeless.
The Hannibal Directive, also translated as Hannibal Procedure or Hannibal Protocol, is the name of a controversial procedure used by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. According to one version, it says that "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces." It was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and subsequent controversial prisoner exchanges. The full text of the directive was never published, and until 2003, Israeli military censorship forbade any discussion of the subject in the press. The directive has been changed several times, and in 2016 Gadi Eizenkot ordered the formal revocation of the standing directive and the reformulation of the protocol.
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany occur frequently in the political discourse of anti-Zionism. Given the legacy of the Holocaust, the legitimacy of and intent behind these accusations are a matter of debate, particularly with regard to their potential nature as a manifestation of antisemitism. Historically, figures like British historian Arnold J. Toynbee have drawn parallels or alleged a relationship between Zionism and Nazism; British professor David Feldman suggests that these comparisons are often rhetorical tools without specific antisemitic intent. On the other hand, the Anti-Defamation League sees these comparisons as attempts at Holocaust trivialization. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy argues that such comparisons not only lack historical and moral equivalence, but also risk inciting anti-Jewish sentiment.
Mass civilian casualties of Israeli bombing, shelling and rocket attacks on the Gaza Strip have occurred in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in which Israeli bombing attacks on the Gaza Strip cause numerous civilian fatalities. The reason for such operations is purportedly to carry out targeted assassinations of militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups seen to be a threat to Israel, whose Shin Bet data banks monitor thousands of Palestinians for targeting. Israel regards such cases as either unfortunate errors, the consequence of civilians being allegedly used to shield militants, or as acceptable collateral damage.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas and several other Palestinian nationalist militant groups launched coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza Envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The attack coincided with the Jewish religious holiday Simchat Torah. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups named the attacks Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, while in Israel they are referred to as Black Sabbath or the Simchat Torah Massacre, and internationally as the 7 October attacks. The attacks initiated the ongoing Israel–Hamas war.
On 7 October 2023, in the opening attacks of the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Hamas militants carried out a massacre at Be'eri, an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza Strip.
On 7 October 2023, around 70 Hamas militants attacked Kfar Aza, a kibbutz about 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) from the border with the Gaza Strip, massacring residents and abducting several hostages.
The State of Israel has been accused of carrying out a genocide against Palestinians at various times during the longstanding Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Debate on whether Israel's treatment of Palestinians since the Nakba meets the definition of genocide is ongoing; and whether such actions are continuous or limited to specific periods or events. This treatment has also been characterised as "slow-motion genocide", as well as a corollary or expression of settler colonialism and indigenous land theft.
Misinformation involving the distribution of false, inaccurate or otherwise misleading information has been a prominent and ubiquitous feature of the Israel–Hamas war.
The Nukhba forces, Nukhba Force or just (Al-)Nukhba are a special forces unit of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The word "Nukhba" is used by Israelis to refer to Hamas militants. In 2024 the usage of the word in Israel roughly corresponds to "Hamas militant" or "Hamas commando".
Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre is a compilation by the IDF Spokesperson's Unit of raw footage from the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The film includes footage captured from body cameras worn by Hamas militants on 7 October, and contains scenes of extreme violence recorded during and after the incursion.
During the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, dozens of Israeli women, girls, and men were reportedly subject to sexual violence, including rape and sexual assault by Hamas or other Gazan militants. The militants involved in the attack are accused of having committed acts of gender-based violence, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Hamas has denied that its fighters committed any sexual assaults, and has called for an impartial international investigation into the accusations.
Allegations have been made that the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel constituted a genocidal massacre against Israelis. In the course of the assault, Palestinian militants attacked communities, a music festival, and military bases in the region of southern Israel known as the Gaza Envelope. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,163 Israelis and foreigners, two thirds of whom were civilians.
The Israeli government's response to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel has multiple aspects, including a military response leading to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In October, the Knesset approved a war cabinet in Israel, adding National Unity ministers and altering the government; Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz froze non-war legislation, establishing a war cabinet with military authority.
On 13 July 2024, Israeli airstrikes hit the Al-Mawasi area near Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war. The attack killed at least 90 Palestinians, among them women and children, and injured over 300. Israel said that the strike targeted Hamas top leaders. Survivors reported that they were targeted without warning in an area they were told was safe.
Israeli public diplomacy in the Israel–Hamas war, also referred to as Hasbara in the Israel–Hamas war or Israeli propaganda in the Israel–Hamas war refers to the Israeli effort towards bringing more favor of global public opinion to Israel and its actions during the Israel–Hamas war.
In accordance with the disinformation playbook, malign actors have sought to hijack and manipulate the reputation and credibility of long-established news sources. In order to establish an "authentic" grounding for atrocity denial and conspiracy theories, it is unsurprising that influencers would seize on an established Israeli outlet like Haaretz, to co-opt its credibility and misrepresent its reporting. Haaretz has reported on two instances where sources told reporters that in the midst of the massacres, IDF forces firing at Hamas terrorists may have also hit, not confirmed killed, some civilians. Malign actors have exploited this reporting, published with no context, to purposefully decontextualize it and falsely claim that Haaretz corroborated the false theory that the IDF committed mass killings of its own people. This disinformation was then shared by others – some perhaps acting with good intentions, but creating misinformation nonetheless. According to the BBC's Sardarizadeh, the denialist narrative that "it was Israel that killed its own civilians on 7 October, not Hamas," has become appallingly widespread online.
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