Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time main text: 3 mins.)
Israeli journalists have been accusing the Israeli military command of re-activating their infamous “Hannibal Doctrine” to prevent Palestinians capturing Israelis “by any means necessary” – including killing the prisoners.
The Doctrine takes its name from a Carthaginian general and statesman famous in history for his early successes against the Roman Empire. In his declining days, unable to escape Romans coming to take him prisoner, Hannibal swallowed poison and took his own life.
After 2006, the Israeli armed forces were informed verbally that in the case of the Palestinian resistance capturing a member of their forces alive, they would kill him rather than be obliged to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldiers’ release.1
The military claimed to have abandoned the Hannibal Doctrine afterwards but within a couple of days of October 7th, people monitoring Israeli printed media and radio found references to an Israeli commander calling a strike on their own base and helicopters shooting cars heading to Gaza.
Some if not all of these would have likely contained Israeli prisoners taken by the Palestinian fighters and explains the torched wrecks containing incinerated bodies, the victims of Hellfire missiles from the helicopters – the kind of weapons not carried by the fighters.
There were also the statements of Israeli survivors in the kibbutz about an Israeli tank firing a shell into a house containing Palestinian fighters and their prisoners, in addition to a crossfire between the Israeli military and the Palestinian fighters in general.
Although these accounts were taken from Israeli sources, with quotations of named individuals and even audio record of a radio interview and shared on line, the western mass media chose to ignore them.
Now, the allegation that the “Hannibal Directive” was reactivated (if it was ever abandoned) is being widely discussed in Israeli media with calls for an investigation and for the military to come clean. They in turn have promised an investigation but only once this particular war is over.
But once again, the western mass media is not covering the discussion and continues to repeat the number of 1,200 Israelis killed by the Palestinian fighters on 7th October,2 which is clearly not the case. This is the ‘free press’ which we are told to value so much!
At some point in the future the facts will emerge and the western mass media will probably do a lot of reporting on the various admissions and theories, without once having the grace to even apologise for keeping all this from their readers for so long.
However, medical staff have been warned by Israeli authorities not to speak to journalists or to the United nations commission investigating the events of October 7th on Israeli-held territory.3
Meanwhile, relatives of the Israelis captured by the Palestinian fighters are demanding that the return of the prisoners be prioritised, even breaking into a Government meeting and shouting at Israeli government ministers,4 painting red the road outside Netanyahu’s home, etc etc.
Those in command at political and military level seem, by their actions rather than their words, ready to sacrifice the captives in order to wreak as heavy and long-lasting destruction and death as possible upon the Palestinian population of Gaza.
Even medium-ranking military commanders (and some higher) are reported saying that Netanyahu’s purported twin strategic aims of wiping out Hamas and “freeing the hostages” are not doable and are even mutually exclusive.
This must have an impact on the morale of commanders and lower rank Israeli military who have also found the fighting much harder than they expected and were unable to occupy the whole of northern Gaza in the face of fierce united Palestinian resistance.
Indeed, the numbers of IOF dead announced by the Israeli military do not seem to match the losses of their armoured vehicles alone, given that the tanks have a crew of five and even a tank disabled by rocket and repairable later is likely to have a dead crew.
Their losses in battle commanders is also high; these have their command stations inside tanks.
The injuries of wounded Israeli soldiers are likely to be of a serious physical nature and to that one must add mental trauma. Indeed, for all their much-vaunted equipment and total control of the air, the military performance of the Israeli ground military is widely reckoned poorly.
The public jeers of the Palestinian resistance that the Israeli military is at its best when it comes to fighting civilians, women and children but that confronted with armed resistance, they are not much, seems more than just propaganda to boost the morale of the Palestinians.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Invoked in 2014 at least, leading to the death of a captured Israeli soldier https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/3/whats-the-hannibal-directive-a-former-israeli-soldier-tells-all
2https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/israel-revises-death-toll-from-october-7-hamas-attack-to-1200-people
3https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-forbids-doctors-from-speaking-to-un-group-investigating-oct-7-atrocities/
4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=956PmusMABk
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive
Israeli media discussion on whether their armed forces killed Israelis: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-12-13/ty-article-opinion/.premium/if-israel-used-a-procedure-against-its-citizens-we-need-to-talk-about-it-now/0000018c-6383-de43-affd-f783212e0000
External media with Israeli testimonies on the Doctrine:
Electronic Intifada re the Doctrine: https://youtu.be/-yxEMYRoYBc
https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/hannibal-directive-did-israel-kill-its-own-15574953
Reiterating the incorrect numbers: https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visualizing-data
Israeli relatives of prisoners held by Palestinians demonstrate against Israeli Government and storm cabinet meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=956PmusMABk
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