The French newspaper Liberation said that the almost final assessment, two months after the attack launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Israel, confirms that some of the alleged “atrocities” that were sometimes hastily reported and reached the highest levels to obtain international support for Tel Aviv never happened.
In a joint investigation between Cedric Mathieu, Florian Gautier, and Jacques Bizet, the newspaper recovered the details of the actions, most of which were filmed on the day of the Al-Aqsa Flood on the seventh of last October, after the final results of what happened became almost known.
The newspaper’s fact-checking department noted many unconfirmed or inconsistent stories and testimonies, and available data has confirmed that some of the “atrocities” initially described did not occur. Most of these false testimonies relate to allegations of child abuse, which were at the heart of the public relations campaign that Israel started it two months ago.
These lies were promoted for weeks by volunteer rescuers, soldiers or Israeli army officials, but also by the head of state and Israeli diplomacy, and were hyped by the world press, as well as statements by Western political leaders.
The newspaper wondered: Did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the wife of President Isaac Herzog intentionally spread lies in diplomatic conversations at the highest levels, with the aim of garnering support for international public opinion?
The lie of 40 children
Three days after the Hamas attack (the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood), the Israeli army allowed foreign journalists to enter Kibbutz Kfar Azza, located less than a kilometer from the Gaza Strip. There, Nicole Zedek, a correspondent for the Israeli Channel 24, reported that “one of the leaders here said that no less than About 40 children were killed, adding that “some of them were beheaded. He said he had never seen such brutal acts before.”
This statement was repeated in the media around the world, and by the Israeli authorities, for several weeks. The next day, the “official account of the State of Israel” posted on Twitter a video clip from the same channel invoking the “Kfar Azza massacre,” accompanied by the phrase “40 children were killed.” The statement then spread prominently among the videos with which Israel flooded the Internet in October. The first is to denounce what it describes as the “crimes” of Hamas.
Only one child was found among the civilians killed on October 7
However, this information now contradicts the numbers, because the Israeli police informed the Israeli National Insurance Institute, whose statistics are considered a reference today, of the names of the owners of 789 identified bodies of civilians, excluding the security forces, and only one child was found among the civilians who were killed on October 7. Last October.
In light of the information available to the newspaper, many of the statements that followed the attack, in addition to the 40 children’s lie, appeared to be “inaccurate or false.”
Some of this can be explained by the chaos that followed the attack, the extent of the destruction, and the bodies that were not identified, but others were just “pure inventions,” unrelated to the proven facts and not connected to them at all, according to the report.
Kfar Azza.. a hotbed of lies
According to the newspaper, the roots of most of the false statements related to infants or young children go back to Kibbutz Kfar Azza, where the 40-child lie was born, and some of them came from military sources, as Colonel Golan Fach, commander of the National Rescue Unit of the Israeli army, told a delegation of French parliamentarians that he “reported himself, the headless corpses of children,” and this story today contradicts the assessments.
Colonel Golan Fach, commander of the Israeli army’s rescue unit, said he “personally transported the bodies of decapitated children,” and this story today contradicts assessments.
For his part, retired Lieutenant Colonel Yaron Buskila told the Epoch Times that he spoke to a rabbi who was said to have visited Kibbutz Kfar Azza, and said, “I regret meeting the rabbi. His description of the things he saw was so shocking, that I vomited,” and according to Buskila, “he saw the rabbi.” Children hanging in a row on a clothesline, with their mothers’ bras on.
Yaron Buskila, of the Israel Defense and Security Forum who advocates the idea that peace in Israel can only be obtained by force, repeated the same account in an interview with the Kikar Hashabat news site, this time claiming that he had seen with his own eyes “babies hanging on a clothesline.” The website deleted the interview because it reported that no children died in Kfar Azza.
The newspaper pointed out that there were other inconsistent or unverified stories, some of which came from relief agencies, and from the charitable organization “Zakka” in particular, which is responsible for collecting bodies. Its director, Yossi Landau, appeared and testified before the whole world, in multiple interviews, that Many “atrocities” were committed, but some elements of his stories seemed distorted if not invented.
Netanyahu conveys the lie to Biden
Yossi Landau recounted the discovery of the burned bodies of 20 children in the Be’eri settlement, and said, “I saw 20 children together, with their hands tied behind their backs,” and this statement was echoed by a large number of media outlets.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was filmed speaking on the phone with US President Joe Biden, saying, “They took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them, and executed them.” This story contradicts what we know today, where 10 miners were killed in Be’eri.
Regarding Be’eri, Yossi Landau recounted the discovery of the bodies of a family that included two children aged 6 and 11 (or 6 and 7, according to another interview), who had been tortured while what he described as “terrorists” were eating the remains of the Sabbath meal.
The statements made by Landau varied depending on the media he spoke to. Sometimes he spoke about children being burned alive in front of their families, but more often than not he spoke in detail about the mutilations inflicted on each family member.
Blinken repeated before Congress Israeli accounts of “atrocities” committed against children in Be’eri, but reports proved that they did not occur.
These “atrocities” – as the newspaper says – were reported verbatim by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on October 31 last before the US Senate: “A little boy and a little girl, ages 6 and 8, and their parents at the breakfast table. The father’s eye was gouged out in front of his children and cut off.” The mother’s breasts, the girl’s foot was amputated, and the boy’s fingers were cut off before they were executed,” noting that no child between the ages of 6 and 11 years old died in Be’eri, according to available reports.
Eli Beer, director of the non-governmental organization “Yanatad Hatzalah”, provided this testimony (which was false, according to the newspaper), and said, “I saw with my own eyes a woman who was four months pregnant, and she was in a small kibbutz. They entered her house in front of her children, opened her stomach, took out the little girl, stabbed her, and then “They shot her in front of her family. Then they killed the rest of the children.”
He added, “I saw young children with their heads cut off, and we did not know which child had their head… We saw a small child in the oven. These miscreants put the child in the oven and lit the oven. We found the child a few hours later,” he said.
At the time that Eli Beer testified before American Republican leaders, Lenore Atias from the same organization was giving an interview to the American channel CNN on November 1, in which she described this “terrifying” scene that she said she had seen in Be’eri. “She was there.” A little girl, 8 or 9 years old. They cut off her hand and she was still breathing, and that was her last breath. She lost a lot of blood for hours,” and no matching information was found for such a case, the newspaper says.
The newspaper concluded that this campaign, which was whispered in the ears of political leaders and formulated on social networks and among journalists, was aimed at mobilizing and then strengthening support for Israeli and international public opinion for the violent reprisals in Gaza.