Genocide Blog 44 – What is 7 October? Its real meaning

22.05.2024

The two words in the expression “7 October” have come to mean more than a date. We are now used to The Inquisition on western media and in US Congressional hearings: “Do you condemn the 7th October?” And if you don’t say the words like a parrot, “Yes, I condemn 7th October”, or if you try to contextualize the expression “7th October” in any way, even going only as far back only as 6th October, let alone to 1948, you risk being punished. Punishment could be anything from being insulted for the rest of a TV program to losing your job. 

Anyway, I would like to use today’s blog to reflect on “7 October”. In particular on three aspects of it. 

First: Why the Lurid Claims

When the politically powerful in the West and their subservient media referred to “7 October” in the first four or five weeks after the incursion out of Gaza into Israel, they were often referring to lurid fabrications about Hamas fighters, for example, “beheading babies”. Who would not condemn “7 October”, if that was what “it” was. 

Take President Joe Biden. “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” he said, (on NBC, 11 October). Following Biden’s bizarre grammar, he saw the terrorists beheading children and/or had “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children”, depending on where the comma is. But they did not exist. Not the pictures nor the beheadings.

When asked for proof, Biden’s spokespeople tried to cover up for him. “Two senior administration officials said Biden was referring to reports from Israel about beheaded children and [they] cited several media reports of beheadings,” NBC wrote. So, he did not see anything at all, but referred only to “reports” in the press of the occupying power, Israel. Suppose we accept his correction, via his aides. Then we await confirmation of the “reports”. But, the nebulous “reports” were never confirmed. This was because the events, singular or plural, never happened. Meanwhile, dozens of millions of people had been reading dangerous lies about supposedly “40 beheaded babies”. This kind of propaganda is the stuff lynching is made of.

So, Biden did not “see” the pictures, nor have access to “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children”. It was just a lie he told. Or, at best, a slip of the tongue. One slip of his tongue. It can happen. But, his aides now know.

The Washington Post takes up the story six weeks later, with “The second time Biden made reference to it [beheadings], while visiting Israel, his language was more careful. He did not necessarily say babies were beheaded, just that there were beheadings.” So, it is no longer beheading of babies, but mere unspecified “beheadings”. His aides must have warned him, and so he comes out with a sleazy half-cover-up-half-denial of what he said before. But maintaining “beheadings”. He wants “beheadings”? He needs “beheadings”? It seems like it.

The Washington Post continues in its 22 November edition, however, on Biden’s third reference to beheadings, when once again he said Hamas “were cutting babies’ heads off.” What kind of a President is this?

In fact, it turns out that there was one baby killed on 7 October. Tragically, 10-month-old Mila Cohen was shot while being held by her mother. This is a war crime. Why do the Israeli government and the US President want to invent “worse” atrocities? Or more appalling ones? Why not tell the truth? Killing civilians is a war crime. So why not be honest about what happened. This kind of lying about outrages is totally unacceptable, and it is dangerous. 

I, for one, will never again believe anything Biden says, until I get proof. If someone lies in order to cover up genocide, he has started to hit moral rock bottom.

White House advisors had specifically told the president to “cut a line about Hamas beheading babies because those reports were unverified”, according to The Washington Post of 26 November, 2023. But, he insisted.

When this beheaded babies rumour began to be exposed after Biden’s first lie, a new lie began to raise its ugly head about supposedly “babies cooked in an oven”. This was also a fabrication or, at best, a gross error of some unimaginable kind, involving perhaps an event provoked by Israeli hell-fire missiles fired in counter-offensive that notoriously burn people to cinders.

And then, of course, when all the lies about “baby killing” were exposed as cheap war propaganda when Ha’aretz published the full list of deaths, one by one, with age and place of death, then we got a barrage of claims of a new kind. Lurid claims of “mass rape”. These lies have two “uses”: the first one is they try to “justify” the unjustifiable genocide that Israel and its supporters are committing. (We will come to the second use later.) 

Many of the fabricated stories of rape were based on now-exposed lies, invented by the totally discredited right-wing burial association called ZAKA. They have fallen apart on cursory examination. Other sources, like the New York Times, had to cancel an announced series, when their now-notorious story collapsed into a heap of lies. The family of one victim said it was just not true that she had been raped. The lies about systemic, mass rape were painstakingly exposed by smaller media outlets in the USA, like the Gray Zone, the Electronic Intifada, The Intercept and Mondoweiss – despite cruel accusations in the mainstream media against them for “not listening to women”. In fact, no woman has come forward with an account of rape to listen to. There is no forensic evidence of rape either, on the bodies of dead women. Nor are there witnesses. There may, indeed, have been cases of rape, but there has been no indication at all of mass rape or of the systemic use of rape that Israeli and US politicians and media claim. 

Now, last week, another source of rape allegations from a more serious source than ZAKA, or even than the New York Times, has retracted its previous statements. “Physicians for Human Rights Israel” (PHRI), in particular in its November 2023 12-page “position paper” alleged rape was used as a weapon of war. Now, the PHRI has expressed “regret” for publishing “disputed” testimonies or those “deemed unverifiable”, in an addendum to their position paper.  “We regret their inclusion in the position paper.” Their errors, they said, were because “a substantial portion of the information that is now available was not accessible when the document was originally drafted” (in November).  

Even Mauritian Barrister Pramila Patten, who wrote up a UN Report that LALIT and many others criticized for making unsubstantiated claims of rape and thus playing into the hands of Israeli propaganda, has, herself, jacked out of a UN Security Council briefing that she was due to be “lead speaker” at, on Thursday last week, 16 May. The Times of Israelreports that “The UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict Pramila Patten pulled out of a Security Council session where she was supposed to brief members about the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7”. It is believed she did not want to be used by the Israeli-US lobby, which had pushed for the Security Council briefing.

So, now we are realizing that the lurid stories of “mass rape” were made up, just as the baby-beheadings and babies cooked in ovens were inventions. 

It is also now accepted in Israel that many deaths due to burns were caused by the IDF counter-offensive using hellfire missiles, and some shooting deaths were from IDF tank artillery. The number of deaths had been reduced by the IDF from 1,400 to 1,139. Some 400 were soldiers, police officers and security guards. The rest, 695, were civilian Israelis. The rest were migrant labourers. These deaths mean there were prima facie war crimes on a big scale on 7 October. They merit investigation and judicial proceedings.

But, what we need to note is that neither the real war crimes nor the invented lurid claims of beheaded babies and mass rapes on 7 October are an excuse for further war crimes in revenge, nor, most certainly, for genocide. Nothing is an excuse for genocide. 

And then, What the Lurid Claims Hide 

The lurid claims about beheading of babies, cooking of babies, and mass rape of women, have a second use. 

They distort the history of 7 October and thus distort the meaning of the words “7 October”, to mean only the war crimes that were committed, and nothing else. The lurid stories intentionally distract attention from the heavy military defeat that Israel and its self-declared invincible army suffered. So, the hideous claims were invented for two reasons: to justify future crimes including genocide, and to mask the utter humiliation of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). 

Israel decides to hide the IDF defeat of 7 October by pretending it was something else. In reality, Hamas and the other resistance fighters inflicted a severe, unexpected, unprecedented, humiliating defeat on the IDF. All the IDF bragging left them totally ashamed. This is understandable. Why the USA including its president should just follow like tails behind this ludicrous posture is more complicated. And why the western media should follow Biden’s tail is even more outrageous.

Anyway, this is why the Israelis, the politicians of the West, and the mainstream media brook no contextualization. It is part of hiding the Israeli defeat.

The resistance armed groups in fact broke the impregnable Israeli Wall around Gaza – with all its automatic cameras and automatic guns that shoot at anything that moves – and they breached it in in 60 different places. In SIXTY different places. We had, in LALIT, previously said that the wall was breached in 30 places, and we thought that was a lot. Now, we read that it was in fact breached in sixty places. All the eleven military bases that “man” the wall, were put out of action. The eyes and ears of the system were destroyed. The iron dome – that protects Israel from rockets – was also put out-of-action by a barrage of light rockets that was too heavy for it to control. Hamas and its allies killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers – 373 soldiers of the IOF and other security officers – according to the social security figures. They took soldiers hostage, too. These were the war aims of Hamas and the other armed resistance groups: To breach the apartheid wall, and to take hostages, so that they have a way to bargain for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners – almost all held illegally in Israeli jails – and including women and children. They succeeded in their war aims.

And then, the wall being breached, and opened up like a sardine can in 60 different places, all the security barriers defeated, what happened was that all and anyone who had been locked up in Gaza could suddenly get out! 

Some people wanted to see their grandparents’ land. They ran through, cycled through, jumped on motorbikes and poured through.

Others, like active gang-members – just like there are gangs everywhere, Gaza, too has gangs – wanted to go do some looting perhaps. So, it became a free-for-all. 

So, the 7 October was three things:

1. It was a defeat, militarily speaking, for the Israeli giant army. And it was a military victory for the Palestinian resistance forces. Their military strategy, which was victorious on 7 October, was born after the peaceful protests against the Wall were so viciously attacked by the Israeli Occupying Forces. Between March 2018 and December 2019, the Great March of Return movement was a mass, pacifist movement to symbolize the right to return to the land Gazans lived in before the 1948 Nakba, when they were forced into Gaza, and kept there. Whole families, children, marsan sorbe, youngsters on bicycles, old ladies, all joined the Great March of Return. It was the first big mass movement after the imposition of the siege of Gaza in 2005. Our member, Ragini Kistnasamy tried to visit Gaza in the Gaza Freedom March of 2009, but were stopped from entering by the Egyptian authorities. So, we know just how hermetic the siege was. By 7 October 2023, it had been in place for 18 years. Children who ran into Gaza, aged 18, were born in this concentration camp called Gaza.

So, in 2018-19, there was a happy, festive series of protests, with servolan and candy floss. And then the Israeli Occupying Forces replied with live ammunition. No less. Talk about barbaric. The Israeli army killed 214 Palestinians, including 46 children. They injured over 36,000, including over 8,000 children. The army aimed in particular at handicapped people in wheelchairs, at nurses and at journalists. All these were targeted on purpose.

And so, what were the Palestinians in Gaza to do?

The men in Hamas and other resistance groups turned, in secret, under the very noses of all the cameras watching them from the Wall, towards preparing for an armed struggle, a long and tough battle against the American-armed Israelis. The Israeli State believed it had total “information” through spies and paid informers all over Gaza. But, it was hoodwinked. The great Israeli army, invincible as it is, was out-witted and out-gunned by a band of young men with home-made weapons, produced in tunnels. This defeat the Israelis had to hide. 

So, to hide the shame, the humiliation, the hideous military defeat the IOF suffered, the Israeli propagandists turned to making up the lurid stories about beheaded babies and mass rape. Anything to change the subject from the humiliation of the most macho army in the world: the Israeli army.

2. The 7 October was, in addition, to this military defeat for Israel, the scene of war crimes. Some people who came across from Gaza took prisoners indiscriminately, others killed civilians indiscriminately. These will need to be investigated so as to situate responsibility, and bring charges. We do not need a long session on this part of “7 October” because it is what the CNN, BBC, RFI, Washington Post, The Guardian, not to mention all the right-wing media outlets, have made out to be the totality of the meaning of 7 October. It is well documented.

3. The 7 October was, also, a kind of “prison break” where thousands of ordinary people poured out of the walls of the concentration camp they had been locked up in by Israel for nearly 20 years. And, it was more than that. People got, for the first time in their lives, if they were any age less than 75 years old, to see the land, the farms and all the villages from which their families had been expelled violently in 1948. So, it was a very unusual prison break.

Conclusion

For the history, the date 7 October, 1944 is associated with another rebellion amongst prisoners of another concentration camp, most of whom were Jewish. 

It was a revolt against the Nazi guards at Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando. So, the date 7 October was already important in history. “The Germans crushed the revolt. Nearly 250 prisoners died,” and a number of guards, too, “during the fighting, and guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS [Nazi para-military] identified four Jewish female prisoners who had been involved in supplying explosives to blow up the crematorium. All four women were executed” – Holocaust Encyclopedia. In fact, what the women had participated in, over months and months, was smuggling gunpowder in to the Camp in order for the prisoners preparing for this, to blow up the entire crematorium they were being forced to build. The women prisoners were called Rosa Robota, Ella Gertner, Ester Weisblum and Regina Safirstein. They were hanged in front of the inmates of the women's camp. When the floor of the scaffold opened, one of the women, 23-year-old Rosa Robota, shouted: “Be strong and brave!”

So, the Palestinian people followed in the footsteps of these brave prisoners before them.

Lindsey Collen, for LALIT