FACT CHECK: Did Israel Kill Most Of The Israeli Civilians On Oct. 7?

Elias Atienza | Senior Reporter

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed most of the civilians during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.

Verdict: False

The majority of the civilians were killed by Hamas. Visual evidence also shows Hamas terrorists killing civilians.

Fact Check:

Israel continued its ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, with an IDF spokesman saying that the country has encircled Gaza City, according to Time. Hamas and Israel have continued to clash, with the fighting expected to grow bloodier, the outlet reported.

Nasrallah, during his Nov. 3 address, said that most of the civilians killed in the Oct. 7 attack were killed by the IDF, according to the pro-Israeli research organization Middle East Media Research Institute. The Hezbollah leader said, “Therefore, when they went to restore control over the settlements [kibbutzim and towns] near Gaza’s border from the Palestinian resistance fighters, it was them [i.e., Israelis] who committed the massacres against the Israeli settlers, not, as they claim, that it was Hamas and other resistance factions.”

However, this is false. More than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks, according to The Associated Press. The Times of Israel characterized his statement as false, reporting that there “is overwhelming visual evidence and eyewitness accounts that Hamas terrorists butchered many hundreds of civilians in a premeditated attack, and Hamas terrorists have admitted being ordered to murder civilians.”

For example, 260 people were killed by Hamas at the Nova Music Festival, which was the “biggest civilian massacre” in Israeli history, according to The Associated Press. Body camera footage from an Israeli police officer showed more than a dozen bodies at the music festival, the outlet reported.

The New York Times published a visual investigation showing how Hamas terrorists shot and killed dozens of people in the Israeli city of Sderot. The video’s caption reads, “Videos filmed by residents in Sderot captured a grisly and indiscriminate shooting rampage by Palestinian gunmen in the town on Saturday.” The Washington Post corroborated the death of four individuals taken hostage by Hamas.

Neta Portal, who survived the Kfar Aza massacre, described the Hamas attack in an interview with BBC News. She was shot six times, including in the legs and hands.

“They were shooting people. They were shooting the kids. And the people were shouting, ‘Please no, please no.’ I tried to wake myself because I didn’t want to die,” Portal said. At least 52 people were killed in the attack, according to Ynet News.

A civilian member of the security team at Kibbutz Be’eri told Channel 12 that hundreds of Israeli soldiers “waited outside for hours” as kibbutz security teams tried to repel the assault, according to the Times of Israel. More than 100 people were killed during the attack, the outlet reported.

The South First Responders, a Telegram channel that published footage from the Oct. 7 attacks, shared visual evidence that Hamas rounded up Thai and Nepalese nationals and killed them.

“In this security camera footage from that day in Alumim, we can see Hamas terrorists round up foreign nationals, taking them to their living quarters,” the group wrote in the Telegram post. The Times of Israel reported that 33 Thai and 10 Nepalese nationals were killed during the Oct. 7 attacks. 200 foreigners and dual nationals were killed in the attacks by Hamas, according to the outlet.

The South First Responders has published footage of Hamas executing a mother, firing on civilians in Sderot and firing weapons at civilian homes, among other footage of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Furthermore, documents found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists allegedly show that they had orders to “kill as many people as possible,” according to The Wall Street Journal. NBC News published documents showing that Hamas was targeting elementary schools and youth centers and “intended to kill or take hostage civilians and school children.”

Experts and observers said the claim was false. (RELATED: Hamas Official Falsely Claims Group Did Not Kill Any Civilians)

“Unfortunately we have all kinds of evidence—from security cameras, personal phones, social media, eyewitness accounts—to know this is nonsense. I don’t believe Hamas itself even denies the attacks,” Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon told Check Your Fact in an email.

Oz Katerji, a British-Lebanese journalist, derided the claim on X.

“Nasrallah must be very sure that nobody in Da7ieh has watched the GoPro footage from Hamas fighters going door to door executing people,” Kateriji tweeted.

Michael Weiss, a journalist and the author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” said on X that Nasrallah peddled a “conspiracy theory.” (RELATED: Video Claims To Show Hamas Destroying An Israeli Tank)

“Unsurprisingly, Nasrallah peddles the conspiracy theory that Israeli civilians were killed by Israel, not Hamas. A tacit acknowledgement that these atrocities were not met with unmixed delight by all in the region…” Weiss tweeted.

The IDF told Check Your Fact that they “do not respond to foreign reports.” Check Your Fact reached out to the White House for comment.

Elias Atienza

Senior Reporter
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