October 7
Here's the real story of October 7, 2023 in occupied Palestine once you peel away all the Israeli propaganda.
This is the second in a series of three articles. Read the first article here.
Completely subjugated by their occupiers, forsaken by their brethren in the Arab lands, and forgotten by the rest of the world, the Palestinian cause was seemingly dying a slow death with barely anyone noticing. The Palestinians were left with two options: die in silence or resist with arms. Indomitable people, they chose the latter.
Back in 2021, after another round of Israeli barbarism that left hundreds of Palestinians dead and injured, then Hamas leader in Gaza (now its overall head), Yahya Sinwar, told a Vice correspondent:
“Israel — which possesses a complete arsenal of weaponry, state of the art equipment, and aircrafts — intentionally bombs and kills our children and women. And they do that on purpose.”
“We are forced to defend our people with what we have, and this is what we have.
“What are we supposed to do? Should we raise the white flag? That’s not going to happen. Does the world expect us to be well-behaved victims while we’re getting killed? For us to be slaughtered without making a noise? That’s impossible.
“We decided to defend our people with whatever weapons we have.”
For the Palestinians, the gauntlet wasn’t just laid, it never went away. They were not going anywhere, for as long as a Palestinian were alive there would be resistance, by any means necessary.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
On the Saturday morning of October 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza launched a comprehensive military raid on Israel. The complex operation included overwhelming the much-vaunted Israeli Iron Dome defence system with a swarm of rockets and drones, fighters gliding into Israeli territory on their makeshift paragliders, beat-up pick up trucks and motorbikes, and storming Israeli beaches from the Mediterranean Sea. As the drones and rockets engaged the Israeli defence system, the fighters swarmed into the various Israeli military installations along the Gaza border and took them under their control.
Photos and videos from the day showed Israeli military personnel still in their shorts and slides being taken away by the Palestinian resistance fighters into Gaza, reflecting their complete unpreparedness in dealing with such a coordinated and well-executed military strategy by the besieged people they had subjugated for decades and left to die in abject squalor in the Gaza ghetto of 2.3 million people with nowhere else to go.
Virtually every military outpost in the so-called Gaza envelope was overrun and every military unit routed. It was hours until the IDF was able to formulate an organised response. By the time the Israeli military gathered itself, the Palestinian fighters, surprised by their own success, went deeper and deeper inside Israel. Once they achieved their military objective of completely decimating the military installations along the Gaza border and taking prisoners of war, they seemed unsure of what to do the deeper they got into Israeli territory.
Anticipating instant response and fierce resistance from the Israelis, the Palestinian fighters never expected to venture as far inside Israel as they eventually did. The fierce fighter, who knew they were more likely to achieve martyrdom than go back home alive, battled the Zionists on their own turf for almost a week.
While the fighters stuck to taking military personnel in order to exchange them for thousands of their own hostages rotting away in Israeli dungeons, many of the Gazans who entered the Israeli territory from the breaches created by the Palestinian fighters joined in on the action uninvited and took civilian hostages of their own into Gaza.
When all was said and done, thousands of rockets had been fired inside Israel, over a hundred breaches made in the hi-tech wall that fenced Gaza off, and around 250 Israelis taken as prisoners into Gaza.
There are many videos of resistance fighters taking Israeli military bases one after another, overpowering any challenge from the Zionist soldiers, subduing them, killing them, and taking many of them prisoners.
The disciplined Palestinian resistance handed the vaunted Israeli military — one of the most advanced armies in the world — a comprehensive, humiliating defeat. The beating was so thorough that the Israelis do not talk about it to this day and instead resort to totally made up stories about beheaded babies, babies baked in ovens, babies hung on clothesline, and fictional raped women — all false claims repeated ad infinitum for a year.
To this day, they haven’t been able to name even ONE rape victim from October 7 and a grand total of ONE baby (a 10-month-old named Mila Cohen) was reported killed on the day after getting caught in a crossfire — it’s not clear who killed her. Indeed, it is a tragedy that Cohen died, but her death was not because she was intentionally targeted by the Palestinians, as the Israelis would have the world believe.
Al-Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) spokesman Abu Obeida accurately described the situation that day: “Here is the paper tiger that has been oppressing our people for years. Here he is collapsing before us, paying the price for the desecration of our Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
According to official figures, a total of 1,139 Israelis were killed on the day, nearly 400 of them military personnel. While the rest were civilians, it is a well-established fact that the line between civilians and military personnel in Israel is extremely thin with every Israeli mandated to serve time in the army and heavily armed by the state. Many of the civilians attempted to ward off the Palestinian fighters on October 7 with their arms and likely perished due to their bravado, making it even more difficult to ascertain the true number of non-combatants killed that day.
Mahammed Deif speaks on the occasion of the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7.
Al-Qassam Brigades’ commander-in-chief speaks
Hours after the start of the military operation, Mohammed Deif, the commander-in-chief of the Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, announced the Al-Aqsa Flood battle in a historic speech in which he outlined the reasons for the operation. He also urged all the resistance factions to take part in aiding the Palestinians in their righteous struggle against a murderous occupier:
They attacked the stationed worshippers and desecrated Al-Aqsa, and we have previously warned them. The enemy desecrated Al-Aqsa and dared to harm the Prophet’s path.
Hundreds have been martyred and injured this year due to the occupation’s crimes. Our calls for a humanitarian exchange were met with refusal, and daily violations continue in the West Bank.
We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes. The time has ended for them to act without accountability. We announce the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, and in the first strike within 20 minutes, more than 5,000 rockets were launched.
Starting from today, security coordination ends. Today, the people reclaim their revolution, correct their path, and return to the march of return.
O, our people in Al-Quds [Jerusalem], expel the occupiers and demolish the walls. O, our people in the interior, Al-Naqab, Al-Jalil, and the Triangle [Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem], turn the land into flames beneath the feet of the occupiers.
Oh, our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, today is the day when your resistance merges with the resistance of your brothers in Palestine. It is time for the Arab resistance to unite.
We call for mobilisation towards Palestine. O, our brothers in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab countries, take action and heed the call.
The era of bets has ended, and the occupation must be expelled.
Oh, our people in all Arab and Islamic countries, start marching, not tomorrow, and breach the borders and barriers.
This is the day of the grand picture to end the occupation.
Today, whoever has a gun, let him bring it out; it’s time. Everyone should come out with their trucks, cars, or tools.
Today, history opens its most pure and honourable pages.
Israel’s Hannibal Directive
To ensure no Israelis were taken into Gaza, the Jewish supremacist state, which promotes itself as the saviour of Jews everywhere in the world, proceeded to wantonly kill Jews that day.
In the despicable Zionist calculation, a dead Jew in Israel is better than one taken alive into Gaza. Thus, it activated the Hannibal Directive, which advocates for the mass slaughter of Jews if there’s a possibility of their capture by the enemy.
In accordance with the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli military fired hellfire missiles from helicopter gunships that scorched rows and rows of cars and reduced their inhabitants to charred remains. The Zionist tanks shelled houses full of Israelis indiscriminately and potentially killed hundreds of their own citizens.
There is no proper accounting of the number of Jews who were killed by their fellow Jews in military fatigues because Israel has not conducted any enquiry (and is unlikely to conduct one in the near future), but it is entirely possible that the Zionist soldiers killed the majority of their compatriots who died that day and blamed it all on the Palestinians.
The scenes of widespread destruction seen on October 7 were simply not possible with the light machine guns and shoulder-fired rocket weapons carried by the Palestinian fighters on the day.
Some Israelis, who survived the indiscriminate firing by their own military, recounted how they witnessed their compatriots killing many of their relatives and friends.
One of the survivors, Yasmin Porat, recounted in an interview how she witnessed the Israeli security personnel killing fellow Israelis:
Yasmin Porat: And then they hear me and stop firing. I see on the lawn, in the garden of the people from the kibbutz. There are five or six hostages lying on the ground outside, just like sheep to the slaughter, between the shooting of our [fighters] and the terrorists.
Aryeh Golan: The terrorists shot them?
Yasmin Porat: No, they were killed by the crossfire. Understand there was very, very heavy crossfire.
Aryeh Golan: So our forces may have shot them?
Yasmin Porat: Undoubtedly.
Aryeh Golan: When they tried to eliminate the abductors, Hamas?
Yasmin Porat: They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. Because there was very, very heavy crossfire. I was freed at approximately 5:30. The fighting apparently ended at 8:30. After insane crossfire, two tank shells were shot into the house. It’s a small kibbutz house, nothing big. You saw it on the news.
Another survivor Hadas Dagan gave interviews to Israeli media, recalling her harrowing experience of being fired at by fellow Israelis and witnessing the killing of her husband as a result. However, she still remained protective of her country’s genocidal army that kills its own people with impunity.
Here’s an excerpt from an Electronic Intifada article:
“It’s obvious that this incident presents a very heavy moral dilemma. I don’t want someone to take the story with the very difficult moral dilemma presented here and point an accusatory finger at the army,” Dagan says when identifying the immediate cause of her husband’s death. “To me it’s very clear that I, and Adi, were wounded from the shrapnel of the tank shell because it happened at that very moment.”
She describes the horrifying experience of watching her husband bleed out onto her from a hole in his neck several centimeters long, until he stopped moving.
“I am mad, I am very mad. I am mad that we were abandoned, that we were betrayed, that we were alone, alone, alone, for so many hours,” she says. “Adi, to end his life like that, in that way, crunched up.”
The Hannibal Directive that day was so indiscriminate and ruthless that the bodies of many of those killed were beyond recognition. So much so that the Israeli authorities initially counted the number of dead on October 7 at 1,400 before realising over 200 of those they counted were Palestinian fighters charred beyond identification and counted as Israelis.
The death toll was brought down to 1,139 within days.
Unwanted prisoners taken into Gaza
While the resistance fighters accomplished their objective, many unintended Israelis were also taken to Gaza. As a result of the many holes created in the security fence between Israel and Gaza, many ordinary Gazans streamed into Israel. (There are many videos from the day of Palestinian non-combatants venturing into Israeli territory and bursting into celebration at the sight of the lands their ancestors were ethnically cleansed from and chased out of in the 1948 Nakba, or the Catastrophe. Nearly 80 percent of the residents of Gaza are refugees from 1948.)
These ordinary Gazans went on their private missions to abduct Israelis. They ended up taking civilians who would have been a liability for the resistance. As a result, the resistance dropped off many such prisoners back into Israel. Here’s one example of their humane undertaking at great personal risk:
This video (one of many) flies in the face of the Israeli propaganda about bloodthirsty Palestinians who wanted nothing but to spill Jewish blood. Had that been the case these Israeli civilians wouldn’t have been safely dropped off back into Israel.
Here’s another Israeli civilian, recounting her encounter with the Palestinian fighters. As she worried about the safety of her two kids, one fighter told her:
Don’t worry. I am a Muslim, we will not hurt you.
She went on to recall another interesting detail:
One of them [the Palestinian fighters] sees bananas on the counter, and he asks, “May I eat one?” and I say, “Yes, you can.”
She made it out alive with her kids to smile and tell stories of the morality of the Palestinian resistance. While the Israelis were killing fellow Israelis, the Palestinians were making it a point not to kill civilians and focus only on their military objectives.
There’s also this video of Palestinian fighters playing with Israeli kids and consoling them in the middle of their military operation:
(If the cynic in you thought the resistance fighters killed the babies after filming this video, remember exactly one child was recorded killed that day by the Israelis.)
Another Israeli woman, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, likely taken in by ordinary Gazans into Gaza was released by the resistance as a humanitarian gesture within two weeks. She recalled her experience with the resistance personnel thus: “They treated us gently, they provided for all our needs.”
The Israelis were furious that she spoke favourably of the resistance.
“I have been hearing criticism from people involved in Hasbara [a fancy name for Israeli propaganda] in recent days: the fact that they allowed Yochaved Lifshitz to make a statement live was a mistake. It is not certain that there was someone who held a preliminary discussion on the subject and asked himself all the questions,” tweeted one Israeli journalist.
The copious documentation and statements from many Israelis about the behaviour of the Palestinian fighters paint a diametrically opposite picture to the one the Israeli government and its global propagandists have painted.
What was the Palestinian end game?
The Palestinian resistance undertook the operation to capture as many Israeli military personnel as they could and then exchange them for the thousands of Palestinians rotting away in Israeli dungeons with zero prospects of a fair trial. Such an exchange between the two parties isn’t a novelty.
Among the many different exchanges between the two sides, two stand out. In 1985, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) exchanged three Israeli prisoners for 1,150 Palestinian prisoners, among them were Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, who would go on to co-found Hamas two years later; and Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the current head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
In 2011, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza exchanged just one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Yahya Sinwar was the most famous of the released prisoners. He has since gone on to become the most-wanted and most-hated man in Israel for his commendable leadership of Hamas in Gaza and being the mastermind behind the October 7 operation.
Among Sinwar’s most cherished dreams have been to get all the Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli dungeons. October 7 was his biggest step in that regard. With nearly 250 captives in Gaza, and on the evidence of history of such dealings with the Israelis, the resistance felt confident that they had enough cards on the table to get every single Palestinian out of the Israeli torture camps. They wanted an “all-for-all” exchange: release of all the Palestinian hostages in exchange for every single Israeli in the Palestinian captivity.
Indeed, when the Israelis refused the deal multiple times and proceeded to hunt down their own prisoners inside Gaza, Qassam Spokesman Abu Obeida reiterated that the dwindling number of Israeli won’t change the Hamas equation. “The price that the resistance will demand for five captives is the same as for all the captives,” he said in March.
When Yahya Sinwar met some of the captives inside a tunnel, he introduced himself and told them they would be going home in an exchange deal. “Hello, I am Yahya Sinwar,” one Israeli prisoner recalled Sinwar as saying. “You are the most protected here. Nothing will happen to you.”
After a solitary ceasefire in November during which Hamas let go off more than 100 captives (the deal stipulated the release of only 50 prisoners) in exchange for 150 of their own, the Israelis have shown no appetite for another deal.
A year has passed since the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the Israelis have only expanded the area of their genocide without the least regard for the captives. Indeed, they have killed nearly half of them, deliberately.
Noa Agramani, one of a handful of prisoners rescued by the IDF, set the record straight about who wanted to protect her and who wanted to kill. “[Hamas members] did not hit me while I was in captivity, nor did they cut my hair; I was injured by the collapse of a wall caused by an [Israeli] Air Force pilot,” she said in August. “As a victim of 7 October, I refuse to be victimised once again by the media.”
Even Netanyahu admitted that Israeli captives were under bombardment of Israel’s indiscriminate bombings.
There have been few military successes as spectacular as the one attained by the Palestinian resistance on October 7. Indeed, the operation, purely military in nature, has been described by former weapons inspector and intelligence officer Scott Ritter as “the most successful military raid in modern history.”
Palestine was put firmly on the map on October 7. The resistance’s success has ensured that no one will ever deal with the Israelis without taking the Palestinians into consideration. They will never again be bypassed, treated as nobodies. Nothing will ever be the same again. There will be no going back to October 6.
One wonders, however, if the Palestinian resistance — or, for that matter, anyone else other than the genocidal Israelis — foresaw the events of the next 12 months that followed their glorious military success.
This article is the second in a three-part series on the valiant Palestinian resistance of October 7 to the brutal occupation by the Jewish supremacists in Israel and its aftermath.
Read the first part, October 6, here; and the third part, October 8 and after here.
Before you go…
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The morality of the Palestinian resistance
The leaders of the “civilised” West are appalled that six Israeli prisoners of war taken by the Palestinian resistance during their Al-Aqsa Flood Operation of October 7 died in Gaza last week. They have issued statements expressing their indignation at the loss of those Israeli lives. Reading the comments of these Western leaders in isolation one would …
Thank you for your work on this.
As soon as Yochaved Lifshitz is speaking favorably in the video, a guy (shaved head) behind starts signaling to shut it down and her daughter then says no more questions instead of allowing her mother’s voice.
It’s all so tight lipped and fabricated, I can understand why Israelis believe the lie of their life. Many eyes were opened however, may it be the unraveling of all the falsehoods.
Outstanding compilation as always, my wellbeloved friend. Will almost definitely heavily use/cite/link to this for my own "Reichstag II revisited" analysis coming ideally tomorrow.