On the IDF’s Hannibal Directive

@ChrisLynnHedges – 8 July 2024

The Israeli newspaper Ha’artez has confirmed what outlets such as The Electronic @Intifada @AJEnglish and @TheGrayzoneNews reported months ago, that in the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel on October 7, the Israeli military targeted not only Hamas fighters, but the Israeli captives with them. This revelation, for which these outlets were repeatedly slandered and attacked, radically changes the narrative of October 7. It makes Israel a full partner in the slaughter of its own citizens and soldiers.

The Israeli military obliterated vehicles commandeered by Palestinian attackers that held Israeli citizens, blasted into rubble buildings and homes where Israelis were being held by Hamas gunmen and ordered an air strike against its military facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza, seized by Hamas gunmen, which housed Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers. Israel, in 1986, instituted a military policy called the Hannibal Directive(1), apparently named for the Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be captured by the Romans, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah.

The directive is designed(2) to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands through the maximum use of force, even at the cost of killing the captured soldiers and civilians. The directive was executed(3) during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge. Hamas fighters on August 1, 2014 captured an Israeli officer, Lt. Hadar Goldin. In response, Israel dropped(4) more than 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on the area where he was being held. Goldin was killed along with over 100 Palestinian civilians. The directive was supposedly rescinded in 2016. Now we know it remains in force and that the body count from October 7 is shared between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli army.

This shatters the official narrative of one sided killing repeated slavishly and mendaciously by nearly all news outlets that were fed falsehoods by Israel, falsehoods they never bothered to examine or investigate.