“On October 7, Israeli troops also shot at civilians kidnapped by Hamas”

During the attacks of October 7, Israeli troops also shot at civilians kidnapped by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to hit the militants of Palestinian terrorist groups. Officially, the IDF has always rejected this accusation, speaking of incidents that were inevitable in the chaos of the moment, but the testimonies of hostages, soldiers and former soldiers tell a different story.

Neomit Dekel-Chen had lived in Nir Oz for thirty years and was on the kibbutz when Hamas began the pogrom on October 7 that would lead to the death of nearly 1,200 people in Israel. Kidnapped with other hostages, the 63-year-old was forced to get into a golf cart: “They kept driving towards Gaza with us behind, when an army helicopter appeared,” he recalled to the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “Then the helicopter shot the terrorists: the driver and the others. Everyone was screaming, the terrorists were killed and we were alive, except for one woman who died in the arms of her daughter.” It was her friend Efrat Katz.

Six months later, an Israeli Air Force investigationhe recognized that, probably, the woman had been killed by a helicopter that had targeted the militiamen. The official investigation found that it was not possible to distinguish the hostages from the terrorists. The commander of the Air Force himself, General Tomer Bar, reiterated, however, that “the helicopter crew” had “acted respecting orders, in a complex reality of war”.

The Israeli military also confirmed that this was not an isolated case, on the contrary. On another occasion, again on October 7, the troops were ordered to shoot at a house, despite the presence of civilians held hostage inside. An episode that occurred in the kibbutz Be’eri, where attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad cost the lives of 101 civilians.

After a long firefight against about forty Hamas militants who had kidnapped 15 people, an Israeli tank was ordered to open fire on a house that later became famous. It was the “House of Pessi Cohen,” one of the hostages killed on October 7 in the kibbutz, near the border with the Gaza Strip.

“We know that at least one hostage was killed by one of those bullets,” he said. told to the Australian broadcaster ABC one of the victims’ relatives, Omri Shifroni, who lost his aunt Ayala and his great-grandchildren Liel and Yanai in the attack. “But there are others
that we still don’t know and may never know what really killed them.”

In July, however, the military exonerated troops of any wrongdoing, saying the tank had fired “near” the house after negotiations for the release of the hostages failed. “No civilians were injured by tank fire, except for an isolated incident outside the building in which two people were injured by shrapnel,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) report said. “Most of the hostages were probably murdered by terrorists.” Colonel Nissim Hazan, the tank commander who he shot in Be’eri, “there was no choice but to shoot.”

But relatives of the victims dispute the conclusions of the IDF investigation. “It is not true (that the hostages were not injured by tank fire, ed.)”, he said. Radio Bet Pessi Cohen’s daughter-in-law, Sharon. One of the two survivors of the‘attack, Yasmin Porat, then remembered to the public broadcaster Kan that Israeli security forces began the firefight before the negotiations: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages.”

According to two different investigations by Israeli newspapers Haaretz And Yedioth Ahronothwithout directly mentioning it, on October 7 Tel Aviv would have activated the so-called “Hannibal Directive”, a protocol dating back to 1986 at the time of the war in Lebanon, which authorizes soldiers to shoot enemies who are holding their comrades hostage, even at the risk of the lives of the hostages. “Hannibal to Erez, send a Zik (a drone, ed.)”, would have been the order given then, according to Haaretz. So, for Yedioth Ahronothat least 70 vehicles bound for Gaza were destroyed, killing all on board. No one knows how many of them were hostages.

During the day, they told to Yedioth Ahronoth some air force pilots, 28 helicopters fired all the ammunition they had, refueling repeatedly. Even tanks intervened, targeting vehicles heading towards the Strip. “My instinct told me that there could be some of my comrades on board,” he said. admitted to the broadcaster Channel 13 Captain Bar Zonshein, a tank commander during the October 7 attacks. “But I decided that this was the right choice: it was better to prevent the kidnapping.”

The IDF has never confirmed the use of the “Hannibal Directive,” which in any case does not apply to civilians – as established in 2015 by the Israeli Attorney General – and always recommends the use of light weapons and never bombs, missiles or artillery shells. But, as explainedin a podcast published by Haaretz former Israeli Air Force Colonel Nof Erez, despite not having received an explicit order, the directive was “apparently implemented” by the air force and artillery crews who intervened during the attacks.

To the question sent by the Australian ABC Regarding the activation of this procedure on October 7, the IDF responded that “questions
of this kind will be examined at a later stage”. An evasive answer to say the least.