What Happened on October 7

Hamas issued their after-action report regarding October 7:

The Palestinian group Hamas has said there were “faults” in the October 7 attack it led on southern Israel, but claimed its fighters only targeted Israeli soldiers and people carrying weapons.

In a 16-page report titled “Our Narrative” and published on Sunday, Hamas, which governs Gaza, said it wanted to “clarify” the background and dynamics of the surprise attack it calls Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

In its first public report since the attack, Hamas said it was “a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people”.

Early on October 7, Hamas fighters stormed communities along Israel’s southern fence with Gaza. At least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attack, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on official Israeli statistics, and about 240 others were seized as captives.

Around 100 of the captives were released during a seven-day truce in late November in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Israeli authorities have accused Hamas fighters of committing war crimes during the attack, including torture, rape and mutilation.

Hamas has strongly rejected allegations of sexual violence and or mutilation.

The report said Hamas planned to target Israeli military sites and to capture soldiers, which could be used to pressure the Israeli authorities to release thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The group said that avoiding harming civilians “is a religious and moral commitment” by fighters of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades.

“If there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidentally and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces,” read the report.

It added that “maybe some faults happened” during the attack “due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the areas near Gaza.

“Many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion,” it added.

The Hamas report also addressed the issue of post-war Gaza, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his opposition to Palestinian statehood.

“We stress that the Palestinian people have the capacity to decide their future and to arrange their internal affairs,” the report said, adding that “no party in the world” had the right to decide on their behalf.

The report also listed the reasons that led to the attack, citing Israel’s campaign of settlements’ construction “and Judaization of the Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem”, and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians from 2000 until this year.

In light of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and as our people continue their battle for independence, dignity and breaking-free from the longest-ever occupation during which they have drawn the finest displays of bravery and heroism in confronting the Israeli murder machine and aggression.

We would like to clarify to our people and the free peoples of the world the reality of what happened on Oct. 7, the motives behind, its general context related to the Palestinian cause, as well as a refutation to the Israeli allegations and to put the facts into perspective.

1. The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement.

Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.

Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means.

Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds.

2. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion.

Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.

Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.

Since its establishment in 1987, the Hamas Movement committed itself to avoiding harm to civilians.

After Zionist criminal Baruch Goldstein in 1994 committed a massacre against Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in occupied Hebron City, the Hamas Movement announced an initiative to avoid civilians the brunt of fighting by all parties, but the Israeli occupation rejected it and even did not give any comment on it.

The Hamas Movement also repeated such calls several times, but received by a deaf ear from the Israeli occupation which continued its deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians.

3. Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.

As attested by many, the Hamas Movement dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza, and sought from the earliest days of the aggression to release them, and that’s what happened during the week-long humanitarian truce where those civilians were released in exchange of releasing Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails.

4. What the Israeli occupation promoted of allegations that the Al-Qassam Brigades on Oct. 7 were targeting Israeli civilians are nothing but complete lies and fabrications.

The source of these allegations is the Israeli official narrative and no independent source proved any of them.

It is a well-known fact that the Israeli official narrative had always sought to demonize the Palestinian resistance, while also legalizing its brutal aggression on Gaza.

Here are some details that go against the Israeli allegations:

♦ Video clips taken on that day – Oct. 7 – along with the testimonies by Israelis themselves that were released later showed that the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters didn’t target civilians, and many Israelis were killed by the Israeli army and police due to their confusion.

♦ It has also been firmly refuted the lie of the “40 beheaded babies” by the Palestinian fighters, and even Israeli sources denied this lie. Many of the western media agencies unfortunately adopted this allegation and promoted it.

The suggestion that the Palestinian fighters committed rape against Israeli women was fully denied including by the Hamas Movement.

A report by the Mondoweiss news website on Dec. 1, 2023, among others, said there is lack of any evidence of “mass rape” allegedly perpetrated by Hamas members on Oct. 7 and that Israel used such allegation “to fuel the genocide in Gaza.”

♦ According to two reports by the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Oct. 10 and the Haaretz newspaper on Nov. 18, many Israeli civilians were killed by an Israeli military helicopter especially those who were in the Nova music festival near Gaza where 364 Israeli civilians were killed.

The two reports said the Hamas fighters reached the area of the festival without any prior knowledge of the festival, where the Israeli helicopter opened fire on both the Hamas fighters and the participants in the festival.

The Yedioth Ahronoth also said the Israeli army, to prevent further infiltrations from Gaza and to prevent any Israelis being arrested by the Palestinian fighters, struck over 300 targets in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip.

♦ Other Israeli testimonies confirmed that the Israeli army raids and soldiers’ operations killed many Israeli captives and their captors. The Israeli occupation army bombed the houses in the Israeli settlements where Palestinian fighters and Israelis were inside in a clear application of the Israeli army notorious “Hannibal Directive” which clearly says that “better a dead civilian hostage or soldier than taken alive” to avoid engaging in a prisoners swap with the Palestinian resistance.

♦ Furthermore, the occupation authorities revised the number of their killed soldiers and civilians from 1,400 to 1,200, after finding that 200-burnt corpses had belonged to the Palestinian fighters who were killed and mixed with Israeli corpses. This means that the one who killed the fighters is the one who killed the Israelis, knowing that only the Israeli army possesses military planes that killed, burned and destroyed Israeli areas on Oct. 7.

♦ The Israeli heavy aerial raids across Gaza that led to the death of nearly 60 Israeli captives also prove that the Israeli occupation does not care about the life of their captives in Gaza.

5. It is also a matter of fact that a number of Israeli settlers in settlements around Gaza were armed, and clashed with Palestinian fighters on Oct. 7.

Those settlers were registered as civilians while the fact is they were armed men fighting alongside the Israeli army.

6. When speaking about Israeli civilians, it must be known that conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of 18 – males who served 32 months of military service and females who served 24 months – where all can carry and use arms.

This is based on the Israeli security theory of an “armed people” which turned the Israeli entity into “an army with a country attached.”

Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood

7. The brutal killing of civilians is a systematic approach of the Israeli entity, and one of the means to humiliate the Palestinian people.

The mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza is a clear evidence of such approach.

8. The Al Jazeera news channel said in a documentary that in one month of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the daily average killing of Palestinian children in Gaza was 136, while the average of children killing in Ukraine – in the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war - was one child every day.

9. Those who defend the Israeli aggression do not look at the events in an objective manner but rather go to justify the Israeli mass killing of Palestinians by saying there would be casualties among civilians when attacking the Hamas fighters.

However, they would not use such assumption when it comes to the Al-Aqsa Flood event on Oct. 7.

10. We are confident that any fair and independent inquiries will prove the truth of our narrative and will prove the scale of lies and misleading information in the Israeli side.

This also includes the Israeli allegations regarding the hospitals in Gaza that the Palestinian resistance used them as command centers; an allegation that was not proven and was refuted by reports of many western press agencies.

What Happened on October 7