Lede: Evidence is now emerging that up to half the Israelis killed were
combatants; that Israeli forces were responsible for some of their own civilian
deaths; and that Tel Aviv disseminated false 'Hamas atrocities' stories to
justify its devastating air assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Two weeks after the Hamas breakout assault on Israel on 7 October, a clearer
picture of what happened - who died, and who killed - is now beginning to
emerge.
Instead of the wholescale massacre of civilians claimed by Israel, incomplete
figures published by the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz show that almost half the
Israelis killed that day were in fact combatants - soldiers or police.
In the interim, two weeks of blanket western media reporting that Hamas
allegedly killed around 1,400 Israeli civilians during its 7 October military
attack has served to inflame emotions and create the climate for Israel's
unconstrained destruction of the Gaza Strip and its civilian population.
Accounts of the Israeli death toll have been filtered and shaped to suggest that
a wholesale civilian massacre occurred that day, with babies, children, and
women the main targets of a terror attack.
Now, detailed statistics on the casualties released by the Israeli daily Haaretz
paint a starkly different picture. As of 23 October, the news outlet has
released information on 683 Israelis killed during the Hamas-led offensive,
including their names and locations of their deaths on 7 October.
Of these, 331 casualties - or 48.4 percent - have been confirmed to be soldiers
and police officers, many of them female. Another 13 are described as rescue
service members, and the remaining 339 are ostensibly considered to be
civilians.
While this list is not comprehensive and only accounts for roughly half of
Israel's stated death toll, almost half of those killed in the melee are clearly
identified as Israeli combatants.
There are also so far no recorded deaths of children under the age of three,
which throws into question the Israeli narrative that babies were targeted by
Palestinian resistance fighters. Of the 683 total casualties reported thus far,
seven were between the ages of 4 and 7, and nine between the ages of 10 and
17. The remaining 667 casualties appear to be adults.
-- Cont'd at https://new.thecradle.co/articles/what-really-happened-on-7th-october
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