Denial of the 7 October attacks

Denial of October 7 attacks states that the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel did not occur, was a false flag operation by Israel, or was exaggerated. Forms of denialism include making one or more of the following false claims:

• Denying that the October 7 attack occurred
• The attack was a "false flag" operation staged by Israel to justify an invasion of Gaza
• Most victims were killed by the Israeli government, not Hamas
• No civilians were killed on October 7
• The 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas into Gaza were actually kidnapped by Israel
• There were no hostages and the kidnapping were Israeli propaganda

According to the Washington Post, the the October 7 attack was among the most well-documented terror attacks in history, including "a crush of evidence" from smartphone cameras and GoPros from attacking Hamas militants. By January 2024, there was a small, but growing group that denied basic facts of the attacks and spread falsehoods and misleading narratives that minimize the violence that occurred or disputed its origins. Denial has come from the left, far-right, and Holocaust deniers. In addition, scholars and polling by Palestinian organizations characterize the Palestinian public's response as widespread denial.

Scholars and experts have compared denial of the events on October 7 to Holocaust denialism.

Background

See also: Israel–Hamas war, Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel, and Misinformation in the Israel–Hamas war

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel. It began at 06:30 am, when thousands of rockets were launched from Gaza to Israel. Simultaneously, an estimated 1,500 terrorists breached the Gaza-Israel border, attacking Israeli civilian communities, military bases and a music festival.

The Hamas attack on civilians included murders, sexual offenses against women, immolation, mutilation of body parts, and kidnapping 240 Israeli civilians. Following the attack, Hamas published photos of beheaded soldiers.

According to the Washington Post, the the October 7 attack was among the most well-documented terror attacks in history, including "a crush of evidence" from smartphone cameras and GoPros from attacking Hamas militants. By January 2024, there was a small, but growing group that denied basic facts of the attacks and spread falsehoods and misleading narratives that minimize the violence that occurred or disputed its origins. Forms of denialism include making one or more of the following false claims:

• Denying that the October 7 attack occurred
• The attack was a "false flag" operation staged by Israel to justify an invasion of Gaza
• Most victims were killed by the Israeli government, not Hamas
• No civilians were killed on October 7
• The 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas into Gaza were actually kidnapped by Israel
• There were no hostages and the kidnapping was Israeli propaganda

Spread

Even before the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip began on 27 October, comments on social media were denying the events of October 7, including the massacres and the hostage taking. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), false claims and misleading narratives about the attack were seeded on social media platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and 4chan. They then bled into the real world. For example, demonstrators used the claims to justify removing posters of hostages or disputed the veracity of the attack at local government meetings.

Scholars such as professor Jennifer V. Evans of Carleton University have tied the denialism surrounding October 7 to Holocaust denial, which surged online after October 7. Researchers see parallels to disinformation surrounding the 9/11 attacks, which some fringe groups argue was perpetrated by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Joel Finkelstein of NCRI stated that "there's a built-in audience that wants to deny that Jews are the victims of atrocity and further the notion that Jews are secretly behind everything." He said efforts to say Israel was responsible for October 7 are part of a broader strategy by antisemitic extremists to undermine Jewish suffering.

The claims were found across the internet, including on the Reddit subforum LateStageCapitalism and on publications critical of Israel like Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone. They have also been popularized by right-wing Holocaust deniers like Owen Benjamin and far-right conspiracy theorists. The claims are based on cherry-picked evidence to push misleading narratives.

Emerson Brooking from the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council pointed to Holocaust denial as what may happen to October 7, despite copious real-time documentation of the attacks.

Denial claims

On 19 November 2023, a statement was published on the official website of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which blamed the 7 October Re'im music festival massacre on an attack by "Israeli helicopters", instead of Hamas. The statement was taken down a day later without a public statement of correction by the PA, but the U.S. National Security Council stated that the PA had clarified that the 19 November claim was not the PA's official position on the Re'im music festival massacre. Haaretz reported claims that PA President Mahmoud Abbas had not approved the publishing of the 19 November claim.

Israeli Member of the Knesset Iman Khatib-Yassin said on 5 November 2023 that the attackers on 7 October "didn’t slaughter babies and they didn’t rape women, at least not in the footage" of a 43 minute video made by the Israeli Defense Forces and shown to Members of the Knesset, but: "If [such actions] happened, it’s shameful". Following her claim, MK Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra’am party, called for her immediate resignation. Later the same day, Khatib-Yassin apologized, saying: "I had no intention to belittle or deny the shocking massacre on October 7th and the terrible acts against women, babies, and the elderly who were murdered in the South."

Among the Palestinian populace, there are high levels of denialism regarding the attacks on October 7. In a December 2023 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), over 90 percent of Palestinians polled believed Hamas did not attack civilians on October 7. According to Palestinian academic Khalil Shikaki, the director of PCPSR, the "dismissal of the incontrovertible evidence" is mainly due to lack of coverage in Palestinian and Arab media. According to Shikaki, some Palestinians think video footage of the attacks are Israeli propaganda, as Palestinians generally mistrust news from Israeli media, which rely heavily on official accounts from the Israeli military. According to Michael Milshtein from Tel Aviv University, many Palestinians believe that the large-scale destruction could not have been produced by a small group of fighters, but must have been the work of Israeli tanks or helicopters. Palestinian academic Mohammed Dajani stated that many Palestinians believe that Hamas's motivations were not only political, but religious, and therefore the attacks would thus have been prohibited from the brutality that occurred. Milshtein stated the "widespread denial of the atrocities of October 7" is reminiscent of the approach of many Palestinians to the Holocaust.

The head of International Relations for Hamas Basem Naim made the false claim that Hamas "didn't kill any civilians", calling the claim "Israeli propaganda". He additionally stated that the operation on October 7th was "very short", adding that Hamas' militants only had enough time to complete their mission "to crush the enemy's military sites". On 7 November 2023, Moussa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas's political bureau, stated in a BBC interview that Hamas did not target women, children, or civilians in the October 7 attack.

In January 2024, Palestinian diplomat Abdullah Abu Shawesh claimed to Al Jazeera Arabic that no civilians were killed on October 7.

On 22 January 2024, Hamas released a 16-page document titled "Our narrative...Operation Al-Aqsa Flood", denying that it committed atrocities against civilians such as mass rape, claiming that it only targeted Israeli military sites, blaming Israel for civilian deaths during the attack, and not mentioning the 240 Israelis the group took hostage.

Hamas has dismissed allegations of its involvement in sexual and gender-based violence as "wartime propaganda," suggesting that such accusations are aimed at "justifying the very real crimes of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that Israel is carrying out against our people," in relation to Israel's ground offensive in Gaza.

A University of Minnesota professor, Sima Shakhsari, said in December 2023 that regarding the 7 October attacks: "I am a rape crisis counselor, I believe the survivors. I am yet to see Israeli rape survivors of Hamas come and speak", and indicated that it was racist that regarding Israel and Palestine, "Arab men have been demonized and have been marked as monstrous people who are rapists and for violence", comparing it to false accusations of rape against men of color in the United States.

Responses

Main article: Bearing Witness (2023 film)

Due to the denialism that raised in regard to the massacre toward Israelis on October 7, and in an attempt to counter the denial or downplay of the events, the Israeli government presented a 43-minute film to dozens of foreign journalists. The movie presented live footage captured by security cameras, body cameras worn by the Hamas operatives themselves, social media and footage from personal mobile phones that documented the events in real time. The content involved the loss of young lives and the act of beheading victims. According to The Time Magazine, the documentation is essential as the spread of denial about the October 7 events rises on social media.

References

This article "Denial of the 7 October attacks" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Denial of the 7 October attacks. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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