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Israeli army, police repeat false claims of Hamas atrocities

Remains of destruction on Kibbutz Be’eri seen on October 11, 2023. (Photo credit: Lazar Berman / Times of Israel)

The Cradle | January 23, 2024

Recent claims made by a senior Israeli army officer and police spokesperson regarding alleged atrocities committed by Hamas during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood are false, Haaretz newspaper reported on 21 January.

On 20 January, Lt. Col. Guy Basson, deputy commander of the Israeli army’s Kfir Brigade, claimed in an interview with Channel 14 that fighters from Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, murdered eight infants and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp on 7 October.

Speaking to Channel 14, Basson claimed: “We get to Kibbutz Be’eri, and I’m confronted with two main scenarios. One was from the children’s nursery… where [the eight infants] were simply slaughtered and murdered.” When the interviewer asked him in response,” Did you see the children inside…?” Basson responded: “A house. Eight babies, eight dead babies.”

Basson later added: “Another image that stuck with me is Genia, of blessed memory, an elderly woman from Kibbutz Be’eri. I see the number engraved on her arm, and you say to yourself, she went through the Holocaust in Auschwitz and ended up dying on Kibbutz Be’eri.”

However, Haaretz reported that the incidents described in the interview never took place.

Haaretz reported there is no survivor of Germany’s World War II concentration camps named Genia in Be’eri.

The liberal Israeli daily noted that “Regarding the claim that eight babies were murdered in a kibbutz nursery, to this day there is no known case in any of the surrounding communities where children from several families were murdered together.”

In Kibbutz Be’eri, one baby, Mila Cohen, 10 months old, was killed on 7 October, along with her father, Ohad, when Qassam fighters shot through the door of the safe room in their home, hitting both Ohad and Mila on the other side, in an apparent bid to take them captive to Gaza.

A Kibbutz Be’eri spokesperson rejected Lt. Col. Basson’s claims, stating, “Nearly one hundred people were murdered on Kibbutz Be’eri, and the community suffered hundreds of heartbreaking incidents on that Black Saturday and over the past months, especially regarding the hostages. However, incidents such as eight murdered babies and a murdered Holocaust survivor named Genia – did not happen.”

An Israeli army spokesperson said, “The events in question will be investigated and examined. There was no intention to describe a reality that didn’t happen, and we apologize if anyone was offended. We will set the record straight and clarify to all commanders involved in the media effort.”

Channel 14 declined to respond to an inquiry by Haaretz, and the interview still appears on the channel’s social media accounts.

Haaretz notes that in another recent incident, the Israel Police spokesman for foreign media, Sgt. Dean Elsdunne, made an incorrect claim that “pregnant women were sliced open” by Qassam fighters on 7 October. The police spokesman was echoing a previous incorrect claim made by a member of the Zaka rescue organization that collected bodies for burial according to Jewish custom.

A police source said that “after the matter was checked, the incident was clarified to the police officer.”

Following the 7 October Hamas attack, Israeli army soldiers and spokespersons made numerous false claims to portray Hamas as carrying out a massacre against Israeli civilians rather than a military operation to liberate Gaza from decades of Israeli siege, blockade, and bombardment.

The army has sought to hide its own role in killing many Israeli civilians when they responded to the Hamas attack with overwhelming firepower, including from Apache attack helicopters, Merkava tanks, and armed Zik drones. In some cases, Israeli civilians were killed by the army deliberately to prevent them being taken captive to Gaza by Hamas, per the controversial Israeli military doctrine known as the Hannibal Directive.

January 23, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Palestine, Zionism