New documentary reveals how false and inflammatory allegations made their way into the journalistic mainstream
This screenshot from the Al Jazeera film “October 7” shows a building in Israel that appears to have been damaged by Israeli weaponry after the Hamas incursion
Peter Oborne writes in
Middle East Eye 22 March 2024
This authoritative documentary does not flinch from detailing the atrocities and war crimes carried out by Hamas. But it shows beyond reasonable doubt that many of the lurid accounts that emerged from Israeli sources were false.
Deeply inflammatory stories, whether concerning allegations of mass rape or the beheading and burning of babies, were either unsupported by evidence or straightforward lies. Yet, they prepared the way for the murderous savagery of the ensuing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has been described by the International Court of Justice as a plausible genocide.
Al Jazeera painstakingly analyses how these accounts entered the public domain. This involves a sustained look at Zaka, Israel’s emergency response unit of trained paramedics who handle terrorist episodes and homicides.
Al Jazeera shows how Zaka gave details of atrocities that never happened, including of burned and beheaded babies, which made headlines around the world and were used for maximum propaganda effect by Israel to gain sympathy.
One Zaka employee, Yossi Landau, told reporters that Hamas burned to death “two piles of 10 children each” in a house in Kibbutz Be’eri.
This account was pounced on by the media, and a version was repeated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a conversation with US President Joe Biden: “They took dozens of children, bound them up, burned them and executed them.”
Vital reporting
But as Al Jazeera shows, these accounts were untrue. An examination of the list of the dead showed that two 12-year-old twins were tragically killed when police and soldiers stormed the house in Be’eri, but there were no other children at that location, the documentary notes.
More generally, the list reveals that two babies died on 7 October. One was killed when a bullet was fired through a door, while the other died following an emergency caesarean section after the mother was shot. Neither was burned or beheaded.
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Al Jazeera also shows that there is no serious evidence to support claims of widespread and systematic rape, setting out the known facts before quoting British lawyer Madeleine Rees of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, who says: “Nothing that I’ve seen put forward so far suggests that [rape was] widespread and systematic.”
It has been left entirely to non-mainstream outlets to exercise scrutiny and scepticism, and to behave like professional journalists
This is serious, measured and vital reporting. It raises one interesting and significant point: why was it left to Al Jazeera to carry out this work?
Why couldn’t the BBC have done it? ITN? Sky News? The famous Sunday Times investigative unit? Campaigning tabloids like the Daily Mail or Daily Express? Hard-hitting broadsheets like the Times of London?
The answer might be simple: the UK mainstream media has itself played a significant role in promoting and endorsing fabricated Israeli accounts of 7 October. The Express, the Daily Mail, the Times, the Independent and Metro all ran front-page stories amplifying Israeli claims about 40 dead babies. The Daily Mail front page read: “This was a holocaust pure and simple.”
Even to question these terrifying accounts drew accusations of bad faith. According to one Telegraph headline: “Israel shouldn’t have had to prove that Hamas slaughtered babies.”
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