Hannibal Directive: Israel killed its own civilians. Why is the media covering it up?

On 7 October 2023, the world was told a simple story: Hamas militants carried out an unprovoked massacre of Israeli civilians. That narrative, amplified by Israel’s government and echoed uncritically by much of the global press, became the moral foundation for a war that has since reduced Gaza to rubble. But that story is, at best, half the truth.

We now know that Israeli civilians were not only killed by Hamas. They were also killed by Israel itself.

Former defence minister Yoav Gallant has admitted that he authorized use of the Hannibal Directive on 7 October — a standing order that allows Israeli forces to fire even when Israeli civilians may be among the targets, rather than risk their capture.

“In some places it was implemented,” Gallant confessed. Investigations by Electronic Intifada, Hebrew media, and a UN commission corroborate this: Israeli helicopters, drones and tanks attacked houses and vehicles carrying captives, in some cases killing everyone inside. In Kibbutz Be’eri, survivors say it was the Israeli army, not Hamas, that destroyed a home filled with both captives and militants.

And yet, the press ignored it. Gallant’s confession was treated as a minor detail, buried in specialist outlets while mainstream headlines continued to trumpet the “Hamas massacre” narrative. The result is a one-sided story that disguises how many of the dead on 7 October may have been killed by Israeli fire.

Worse, the media did not just omit facts. It actively spread atrocity propaganda that has since been debunked.

• CNN, The New York Times, and the BBC all repeated the claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies — a story first pushed by Israeli officials and later amplified by President Joe Biden. The White House later admitted Biden had seen no such evidence, and Israeli spokespeople quietly walked it back. But the image of “40 slaughtered infants” was already imprinted on the global imagination.
• Similar treatment was given to claims of systematic mass rape by Hamas fighters. Outlets like The Guardian and NBC published the allegations prominently, citing Israeli officials. Subsequent investigations by the UN found some of the most graphic allegations (such as a pregnant woman’s womb torn open) to be unverified or false.
• The Associated Press and Reuters continued to frame these claims as “confirmed” long after doubts were raised, allowing Israeli officials to frame Gaza’s destruction as a just war against barbarism.

These stories ricocheted through newsrooms, seeding disgust and outrage — but retractions, when they came, were muted. The damage was done: the narrative of pure savagery stuck, feeding a climate where vengeance seemed not only acceptable, but necessary.

This matters today because that distorted narrative still drives the war. Israel invokes 7 October in every justification for bombing Gaza, for blocking food and medicine, for mass displacement. The International Court of Justice, in the case brought by South Africa, has already recognized a “plausible risk of genocide” and issued emergency measures to protect Palestinians. Yet Western leaders continue to shield Israel diplomatically, citing 7 October as if it alone explains — and excuses — the devastation of Gaza.

But 7 October was not “unprovoked.” For years, Gaza has been under siege, its 2.3 million people confined, impoverished, and denied basic rights. UN agencies long warned of “unlivable” conditions. Occupation and escalating settler violence framed daily Palestinian life in the West Bank. None of this excuses the killing of civilians by Hamas. But it does explode the myth of a sudden eruption of savagery from nowhere.

The truth is more complex, and far darker: Israel’s own actions helped inflate the death toll on 7 October, and atrocity propaganda helped conceal that fact. The press did not question; it amplified. And the result was not only a cover-up of Israel’s actions against its own people, but a permission slip for the mass killing of Palestinians that followed.

Journalism is not supposed to launder state propaganda. Yet that is exactly what happened after 7 October. By failing to correct falsehoods and ignoring Gallant’s confession, mainstream outlets became complicit in sustaining a narrative that paved the way for genocide.

The war in Gaza is being waged on the back of a lie. The question now is whether the media will continue to bury the truth — or finally confront the cover-up at the heart of one of the century’s darkest chapters.

©TNPP