by WILLIAM VAN WAGENEN
Human Rights Watch’s recent report not only whitewashes Israel’s killing of its own citizens during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, but also omits critical evidence of the occupation army’s orders to deliberately target fellow ’civilians.’
Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a new report on 17 July entitled “I Can’t Erase All the Blood from My Mind,” in which the US-based rights group brazenly claims that Hamas’ leadership issued orders for its fighters to deliberately kill Israeli civilians during their attack on Israeli military bases and settlements in the Gaza envelope on 7 October.
Then, based on that unsubstantiated premise, HRW declares that Hamas leaders are guilty of committing crimes against humanity for launching last year’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
However, any close reading of the report reveals that HRW bases these allegations on dubious evidence. The rights group deliberately ignores the much stronger evidence – presented by numerous Israeli military sources – that Israeli military leaders issued orders to their forces to kill Israeli civilians deliberately.
HRW omits the Hannibal Directive
But the massive 67,000-word HRW report fails to mention the controversial Israeli military doctrine, known as the Hannibal Directive, which directs Israeli forces to kill Israeli civilians and soldiers rather than allow them to be taken captive by an enemy.
As The Cradle and other independent news outlets have documented, multiple reports in the Hebrew language media show how the occupation military used Apache attack helicopters, Zik drones, and Merkava tanks to fire heavy weapons at Israelis within Israeli territory, including in settlements (kibbutzim), military bases, the town of Sderot, and the grounds of the Nova music festival.
HRW even ignored a detailed account published in major Israeli daily Haaretz just this month, which outlined the occupation state’s use of the Hannibal Directive on 7 October:
Documents obtained by Haaretz, as well as testimonies of soldiers, mid-level and senior IDF officers, reveal a host of orders and procedures laid down by the Gaza Division, Southern Command and the IDF General Staff up to the afternoon hours of that day, showing how widespread this procedure was, from the first hours following the attack and at various points along the border.
“The instruction,” said a source in the army’s Southern Command, “was meant to turn the area around the border fence into a killing zone.”
By omitting Israel’s own reporting, HRW misleads by implying that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups killed virtually all of the 1,195 Israelis who died during the 7 October resistance operation.
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