Israeli Minister Threatens Filmmakers' Citizenship over Gaza Documentary
reutersconnect.com293 points by Markoff 20 hours ago
293 points by Markoff 20 hours ago
FWIW, Naza appears to be a fairly in depth documentary where Israeli soldiers give detailed accounts on how the Gaza war worked from the inside, including expansive targets, and well known high civilian death toll.
The immediate response to the 10/7 infiltration attack was extremely lethal to Israelis as well, something not well covered outside of Israeli media.
28 helicopters emptied their internal stores of 30mm autocannon and Hellfires that day, with many RTB to rearm/refuel, all of them at dense Israeli territory. Seven of them dumped their entire stores into Moshav Tkuma. To this day all deaths there are tallied to the infiltrators, with the exception of Efrat Katz. Rapid bulldozer burial of damaged vehicles and buildings was also performed, as the damage from those weapons is very distinctive. Not a gesture of honesty, that.
Tanks were also instructed to fire their main armament into houses known to have civilians inside. Israeli corpses were, again, tallied to infiltrators; any non-Israeli corpses tallied as hostile.
Pilots, soldiers, tankists, and UAS operators all asked over the radio for targets that day, but were simply directed to apply maximal fires to anything that moved in a Palestinian-like way. Hannibal was cited as justification. The Israeli Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was apparently being cited over the air to justify the deaths of civilians. An extreme distortion, but one which Israelis are increasingly making their peace with, alongside many others.
This is a conspiracy that has next to no evidence to support its claims. Judging by your usage of extremely lethal im going to guess you think a significant % of the deaths that day were friendly fire. IDF have addressed both the friendly fire instances and the deaths were 14
Brother, it's literally from their own news.
The conspiracy is lying and that it was more than it actually was to downplay the hamas deaths. Re-read the comment I replied two and look at the way its worded "The immediate response to the 10/7 infiltration attack was extremely lethal to Israelis as well", "28 helicopters emptied their internal stores of 30mm autocannon and Hellfires that day, with many RTB to rearm/refuel, all of them at dense Israeli territory Seven of them dumped their entire stores into Moshav Tkuma." there was 1 death by helicopter when a hamas truck was shot and there was an isreali hostage inside unknown to the pilot. There is no evidence to support the conspiracy that they were mag dumping everything that moved.
"Tanks were also instructed to fire their main armament into houses known to have civilians inside. Israeli corpses were, again, tallied to infiltrators; any non-Israeli corpses tallied as hostile.". There is no evidence they were instructed to do this and there is only one instance of tank fire killing isreali's and it was due to unknown hostages inside the house.
The entire response was within reason for what you'd expect but the iran propaganda network works hard to spin the narrative and create doubt and weave conspiracy.
So the conspiracy is that Israel killed its own people, but in a different way than the person said.
'IDF ordered Hannibal Directive on 10/7 — documents and testimonies, incl. the 7:18 a.m. Erez order (Haaretz)' https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-ma...
'IDF: friendly-fire casualties on 10/7 won't be investigated — "immense and complex quantity" (Ynet)' https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rkjqoobip
'Apache pilots recount 10/7: ammo ran out, RTB to rearm, "sweeping permission" to fire inside Israel (Ynet)' https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/s1nch1cuc
'Pilot: "We had run out of munitions… flew to the base to refuel and rearm" over fleeing Nova cars (Ynet)' https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/rk5vuzk3ge
'"I choose targets where the chance I'm shooting hostages too is low… but it's not 100%" — Apache squadron commander (Mako/N12)'https://www.mako.co.il/pzm-soldiers/Article-199bdbb03215b810...
'IDF probe: hostage Efrat Katz likely killed by IAF helicopter friendly fire (Jerusalem Post)' https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-795543
'Same Katz finding in a right-wing outlet: "Hostage Efrat Katz was killed by IAF fire" (Arutz Sheva)' https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/387990
'Officers invoked defunct Hannibal Protocol; Hiram ordered tank fire on Be'eri house, 14 hostages, 13 killed (Times of Israel)'https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officers-invoked-defunct-h...
'Police source: IDF helicopter "apparently also hit some festival participants" at Nova; police denied (Haaretz)' https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-18/ty-article/.p...
'Yedioth Ahronoth's "28 helicopters emptied all ammunition, hundreds of 30mm shells and Hellfires, renewed runs to rearm" — carried verbatim by ABC News'https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-07/israel-hannibal-direc...
These supports my argument more than yours. You are posting confirmation of what im saying and articles that are speculation and out of context quotes or complete rejections of the claims you are making.
My understanding is that no Israeli soldier went on record, it’s all anonymous testimonies. If these were true allegations it’s understandable why they would want to be anonymous, but obviously the Israeli government is going to figure out who was in this documentary, so it would have been more logical for them to just go on the record if these allegations were true.
Okay, one viewpoint is that it's broadly true, maybe with some exaggeration by the filmmakers and/or interviewees. It's very understandable that soldiers would want to stay anonymous in that version.
I don't think many people would buy your "more logical for them to just go on the record" claim -- in this situation, people are scared! And they have conflicted loyalties as well. They want to blow the whistle, but don't necessarily want to directly accuse their immediate colleagues to their faces.
Another viewpoint is that it's partly true but misleading -- the filmmakers and whistleblowers have blown things entirely out of proportion. That sounds entirely possible. But wouldn't the "logical" response then be more transparency, rather than accusations of treason and a witch-hunt for the collaborators?
And another viewpoint is that it's all completely fabricated, malicious lies. Possibly an extreme crackdown might be an appropriate response in that case? That seems very counter-productive to me, as an outsider, but again cold logic doesn't always apply.
Which of those viewpoints do you find yourself agreeing with?
To me, the broadly true one seems most likely from the available evidence; the hiding of evidence and the attempted crackdown support that one too. It also seems like some people genuinely believe (or pretend to themselves) that it's all malicious lies. To me that smacks of sheer paranoia. Understandable after the October 7 attack, sure, but not rational or productive.
My sense given what I’ve read is that it’s partly true but misleading (and there’s probably some outright lies). But even the idea of “misleading” is very difficult to define because we’re talking about moral judgments about how to conduct war.
For example, apparently in the film they recount a NAZA that was done for strikes to assassinate Hamas leaders in Gaza (NAZA is an acronym in Hebrew that means “collateral damage assessment”, these are done before all strikes in order to assess potential civilian casualties). In this particular case, the strike was planned to kill the Hamas leaders in their homes at night which would likely also kill their families, as opposed to some other time to kill them which would have more or less or different civilian casualties.
So in my opinion there is no issue with killing Hamas leaders in Gaza in their homes even if their families would also die but this may offend western sensibilities for various reasons including perhaps blanket opposition to killing or military conduct at all. But then again Western sensibilities have produced Western societies which have below replacement birth rates and various other social ills which Israelis cannot even conceive of because those issues do not exist in Israel. Jewish teenagers do not go and shoot up their schools, that is something only Arab terrorists do and the reason they do that is very obvious, as are the ways of preventing that.
In the most charitable interpretation, the filmmakers chose to make this film as Western liberals trying to influence the Israeli government to adopt more Western liberal values and approaches to conducting warfare. This is still traitorous conduct since they are aligned with a foreign ideology and interests who seek to do harm against their own state and their own people.
Who do they think they are? The United States?
better text link
Yes - this is a very important story, but the "Reuters Connect" page is completely awful.
Hey, let's present our story as a series of soundbites over emotive imagery and ominous music, that definitely evokes serious journalism.
Sounds very democratic...
The classic "democracy" and "freedoms" paradox.
Iran for example is accused of silencing critics, when everyone else does so as a "normal thing" but Iran is the boogeyman.
I can only imagine the level of propaganda by Israel in trying to downplay their heinous crimes....
I'm not defending Israel as the minister is clearly wrong here, but surely silencing critics by killing them (what Iran is accused of) is quite a bit more severe than removing citizenship?
Thanks for giving me an article of something I know about and think is terrible. That unfortunately wasn't the comparison and if it was I wouldn't have made my comment. The comparison was with removing citizenship.
How many Journalists were killed by Israel in Gaza in the last years?
Quite a few. If that was the comparison I wouldn't have mentioned anything because it would be a similar thing. Comparing murder with removing citizenship is not the same thing. Israel murdering journalists is, but not related to the conversation.
Funniest comment I’ve read all day, thanks. Never seen someone make light of a government rendering someone stateless. Especially rich in the context of an apartheid state.
Are you saying your own comment is funniest your read all day? If not then I am quite confused because I never made light of anything and made it clear that it was the wrong thing to do. I just think comparing murder and removing citizenship is not a great comparison.
If anybody made light of anything it was the person I was responding to.
Israel has murdered journalists in Gaza. That would be the better comparison to Iran's actions. I don't think Israel removing citizenship has an equal comparison with anything Iran has done.
Now where have I heard that before?
https://time.com/7344931/trump-threatens-to-denaturalize-us-...
and the OG version of course:
https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=49...
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Of course this was flagged to death by hasbara.
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This site is not limited to "tech news." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Though to be fair I think this article still might not qualify.
Actually it is:
>Named for the Hebrew military acronym for collateral damage, the film speaks to 24 unidentified Israeli military and intelligence officers who outlined the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israeli army to bombard Gaza in the war triggered by the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.
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Sounds a little fashy.
Is it not possible to want to improve one's country?
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If you have members of your country that think the country is in the wrong and you tell them “then leave the country”… it should be pretty obvious.
It should be pretty obvious what?
It’s generally a fascist viewpoint to say that dissenters should consider leaving the country.
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You've just changed your argument?
This was always my argument. They’re very obviously lying but I should have stated that in my original comment. It’s so obvious that they are lying that I forgot to state that was my position.