When Hamas invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the world witnessed a barbarity not seen against Jews since the Holocaust. Entire families were executed, young people were hunted through fields and burned alive, and more than 1,200 civilians were slaughtered in a single day. Yet within hours of the massacre, as Israeli bodies still lay in the open, a new lie began to spread: that Israel itself was to blame for its own people’s deaths.
That lie — the so-called Hannibal Directive libel — has since become one of the most vicious and persistent disinformation campaigns of the war. It alleges that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deliberately killed Israeli civilians on October 7 to prevent them from being taken hostage by Hamas. The story is false in every conceivable way: historically, militarily, and morally. And its persistence exposes not only the depth of anti-Israel propaganda but also the moral rot of those who repeat it.
1. The Birth of a Blood Libel
The phrase “Hannibal Directive” refers to an IDF procedure first formulated in 1986, allowing field commanders to use force to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers (not civilians) in combat. The logic, though controversial, was strategic: Israel knew that captured soldiers would become bargaining chips for terrorist groups seeking mass prisoner releases. But the directive was never a “license to kill,” and even within its limited scope, it was tightly constrained by operational law and moral considerations.
In 2016, after decades of debate and misuse of the term by Israel’s critics, the IDF formally abolished the directive. It has not existed for nearly a decade. On October 7, no such policy was in effect.
Nevertheless, by mid-morning that day, as raw footage of burned cars and devastated kibbutzim spread online, pro-Hamas networks — many linked to Iranian media operations — began circulating claims that Israel’s own air force had bombed its citizens. The lie was amplified by influencers and “anti-Zionist” journalists across social media. Western fringe media outlets, ever hungry for moral equivalence, repeated it without scrutiny.
This was not an innocent misunderstanding. It was an information operation — strategic, coordinated, and cynically designed to invert victim and perpetrator.
2. What Really Happened on October 7
Eyewitness accounts, geolocated videos, and forensic analysis now provide an overwhelming body of evidence about what took place. Thousands of Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel that morning from Gaza, heavily armed with AK-47s, RPGs, grenades, and incendiary weapons. Many wore stolen IDF uniforms or police vests. Their orders were simple: kill, burn, and kidnap.
They entered civilian homes and executed families at close range. They threw grenades into bomb shelters, setting homes ablaze to drive survivors out — then gunned them down. They set fire to cars, buses, and tents, ensuring that people trapped inside would burn alive.
At the Nova music festival, where 364 people were murdered, forensic investigators later found that vehicles had been destroyed by internal explosions and gunfire, not airstrikes. Engines had detonated from grenade or RPG impact, while windows and panels bore the signature of close-range automatic fire.
If bombs had fallen from the sky, there would be craters, shrapnel dispersal patterns, and blast fragmentation. There were none.
Equally critical: the IDF’s air response was minimal in those early hours. According to testimony from Apache helicopter commanders, only four AH-64 helicopters were ready for immediate deployment that morning, with just two on short standby. Throughout the day, only eleven were airborne in total — spread across dozens of attack sites. Far from “carpet bombing” the border, they were scrambling to contain the largest terrorist assault in Israel’s history with limited resources.
3. The “Apache Video” Hoax
One of the most common pieces of “evidence” cited by believers in the Hannibal libel is a video purporting to show IDF Apache’s firing on Israeli civilians. This claim has been thoroughly debunked by GeoConfirmed, a respected OSINT (open-source intelligence) investigator, who geolocated the footage to areas of active Hamas activity inside Israeli territory.
The original video was released by the IDF itself, showing helicopter pilots targeting armed terrorists fleeing in vehicles. However, in the viral versions circulated by pro-Hamas accounts, the footage was altered — colour-tinted green to simulate night-vision imagery and to disguise terrain features.
This was not only deceptive but technically implausible. The FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) gun camera systems on Israeli AH-64 helicopters produce greyscale thermal imagery, not green night-vision footage. The doctored versions betray a fundamental ignorance of the technology they claim to interpret.
Moreover, multiple international Apache pilots have confirmed that the video displays no civilian targets. Every engagement shows identifiable militants, consistent with standard rules of engagement in a chaotic combat zone.
4. The Psychology of Disinformation
So why does the Hannibal Directive libel persist? Because it is emotionally powerful. Like all blood libels against Jews, it preys on moral shock. It tells people who wish to hate Israel that they can do so righteously — that their anger at civilian deaths is justified because Israel supposedly caused them.
The strategy is not new. During Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, similar accusations emerged — that Israel “bombed itself” in Gaza border incidents or destroyed its own infrastructure. Each time, evidence later revealed Hamas as the source of the destruction. But by then, the headlines had already done their work.
The Hannibal libel is the same playbook — only darker. It takes the most traumatic day in modern Jewish history and repurposes it into a propaganda weapon. It suggests that Israel’s soldiers — the very people who died protecting civilians — were the true murderers. It’s a psychological inversion so grotesque that it verges on sadism.
5. The Evidence Against the Lie
Each major component of the libel collapses under scrutiny:
- No operational directive: The “Hannibal Directive” was revoked in 2016.
- No airstrike capability: The IDF lacked sufficient air assets in the first hours to carry out any large-scale attack.
- Forensic consistency: Wreckage shows signs of RPG and small-arms fire, not bombs.
- Altered footage: Viral videos were doctored to support the hoax.
- First-hand testimony: Civilians repeatedly reported Hamas gunfire and arson, not Israeli shelling.
- OSINT verification: Independent geolocation confirms that alleged “IDF attacks” correspond to known Hamas infiltration routes.
The conclusion is not ambiguous. It is scientific, documented, and moral: Hamas caused the carnage; Israel responded.
6. Moral Clarity in the Face of Propaganda
The libel also exposes something larger — a moral failure in how the international press treats Israel. The world that demanded “Never Again” has again succumbed to the oldest antisemitic reflex: to blame Jews for their own deaths. The readiness with which commentators accepted the “Hannibal” story reveals not curiosity, but bias. It was too tempting a story to check, too politically convenient to doubt.
This is what moral inversion looks like. When Hamas films itself butchering civilians and journalists insist that “the truth is complicated,” something far deeper than misinformation is at play. It is the corruption of empathy itself — the transformation of sympathy for victims into suspicion, conditional on their identity.
7. Why the Truth Matters
The truth matters not only for Israel, but for the moral sanity of the free world. To excuse or rationalise a lie of this magnitude is to become complicit in its aims. Hamas’s propaganda war depends on the willingness of outsiders to repeat its fictions. Each time they do, they extend the life of the terror narrative that began with October 7 itself.
The Hannibal Directive libel will fade, as others have before it. But its reappearance reminds us that for Israel, every battle is fought twice: once on the ground, and once in the mind of the world.
Who fired first? Who burned them alive?
The evidence still speaks — even if the propagandists don’t.
