Israel's still killing Israeli hostages with the Hannibal directive – but now in Gaza itself

One of the biggest lies promoted by the US and Israel is the pretence that, in slaughtering Gaza’s children, Israel has been acting in the interests of Israelis held in the enclave

Those of us who keep banging on about Israel's use of the so-called “Hannibal directive” on 7 October 2023 – in which Israel killed its own citizens to stop them being taken captive by Hamas – have been smeared as excusing Hamas crimes that day.

That is not why we flag the issue.

In part, it is because some of the most horrifying images from 7 October of charred bodies and wrecked cars and homes in Israel – adduced as evidence of an especial barbarism that is supposedly typical of Palestinians – were almost certainly caused by Israel invoking its scorched-earth directive that day.

Those images became central to the propaganda blitz launched by Israel and its apologists to justify the mass slaughter of Gaza’s children over the subsequent 17 months.

But there is also a far more urgent and pressing reason to keep our attention focused on the role of the Hannibal directive. And it relates to what is happening right now.

Israel and the US are still applying the Hannibal directive – against the Israeli captives held in Gaza.

The point of the directive has always been to stop the enemy being able to use Israeli hostages as leverage to draw Israel into negotiations – primarily to pressure it to hand over any of the thousands of Palestinian hostages it holds in its prison-torture camps. Many of them have never been charged or tried.

Israel and the US tell us they need to carpet bomb Gaza – in what amounts to a "plausible" genocide, according to the world's highest court – to force Hamas to return the Israeli captives. But in fact, Israel and the US are recklessly killing those very same captives through their actions.

Why? So they don’t have to negotiate over a ceasefire. So they can carry on with the genocide, without pressure to deal with the fate of the Israelis held in Gaza.

It was exactly the same reckless approach on 7 October, when Israel showed it was indifferent as to whether Israelis lived or died so long as they weren't taken captive.

That’s why – in one instance we know about – the Israeli military fired into a home in Kibbutz Be'eri, knowing that there were a dozen or more Israelis inside, including children. The army was completely indifferent as to whether those Israelis would be killed as a result. All but two were. Those witnesses are the main reason we know what really happened.

That’s why Israel’s Apache helicopters recklessly fired on hundreds of cars fleeing the Nova music festival, indifferent as to whether the cars contained Hamas fighters or Israeli citizens.

Even the former defence minister Yoav Gallant admits the directive was invoked that day.

We'll never know how many Israelis were killed – in part because Israel will never let us know. It's even buried many of the destroyed cars to stop a forensic investigation.

But what we do know with certainty is that the Israeli military killed many Israelis on 7 October.

Western media have studiously refused to report on the issue of the Hannibal directive, even though it is all over the Israeli media. (See here, here, here, and here.)

That is more than just a failure by western media outlets. It is a crime against journalism – if not complicity in the genocide itself.

Western publics need to know that the Hannibal directive was invoked for a very simple reason: it is a crucial piece of information if they are to assess how credible are Israeli and US claims that they are trying to get the Israeli captives back alive, and if western publics are to properly weigh Israel's motives in returning to the genocide in Gaza.

Notice in Trump’s latest deranged tweet, how he accuses Hamas of “murdering” the Israelis held in Gaza. That’s pure, Israeli-inspired disinformation.

It is clear that most, if not all, of the dead captives were killed not by their Hamas captors but by Israel’s massive, reckless 15-month bombardment of the tiny territory of Gaza. That same bombardment, the equivalent of six Hiroshimas, has levelled Gaza and killed many tens of thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands – of Palestinians.

Why is Trump so eager to misdirect us?

Because he wants to win our support for Israel’s continuation of its slaughter of the people of Gaza and justify his own decision to supply, as his predecessor did, the weapons needed to continue that genocide.

After all, Trump makes his own genocidal intent expressly clear in addressing “the people of Gaza” and telling them that they will all be “DEAD” if the Israeli captives aren’t handed over. Yet “the people of Gaza” have no control over whether the captives are released.

Notice too that Trump calls Hamas “sick and twisted” for holding on to the bodies of dead Israeli captives, even though it is Israel that is violating the ceasefire agreement that would see those bodies returned.

This has become a further rationalisation by Israel and the US for killing “the people of Gaza”. But Hamas learnt the value of using dead bodies as bargaining chips directly from Israel.

For years, the Israeli government has had a policy of refusing to return to their families the corpses of those Palestinians it has killed, including while in its torture camps. This violation of international law long predates 7 October. The Israeli courts have repeatedly approved the policy, accepting the government’s view that the bodies should be held as “bargaining chips”. It gave its backing again in January.

So if Hamas is “sick and twisted”, it is only because Israel is even more sick and twisted. If Trump thinks the people of Gaza deserve a genocide because of their leaders’ “sick and twisted” decisions, should he not be consistent and argue that the people of Israel deserve a similar fate for their own leaders’ “sick and twisted” decisions?

A campaign of lies and disinformation have helped to shred international law over the past year and half. And one of the biggest lies is the pretence that, in slaughtering Gaza’s children, Israel has been acting in the interests of Israelis held in the enclave.

[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]

---

All my posts are freely accessible, but my journalism is possible only because of the support of readers. If you liked this article or any of the others, please consider sharing it with friends and making a donation to support my work. You can do so by becoming a paid Substack subscriber, or donate via Paypal or my bank account, or alternatively set up a monthly direct debit mandate with GoCardless. A complete archive of my writings is available on my website. I’m on Twitter and Facebook.