In a shocking revelation, an Israeli police investigation into the Nova music festival massacre on October 7 revealed that Israeli forces also killed some of the attendees, according to Haaretz, an Israel-based media outlet.
A source told Haaretz that an investigation into the incident indicated that an Israeli combat helicopter that arrived from Ramat David base fired at Hamas militants but also shot dead many of its own citizens attending the music festival. About 364 people were killed there, according to the police.
Earlier, the Israeli military had claimed that Hamas had prompted the attack on the music festival and had killed 260 Israelis. However, this is the first acknowledgement that confirms Israeli forces killed their own people.
Hamas did not know about the fest
Haaretz reported that “there is a growing assessment in the security establishment that the terrorists who carried out the massacre on October 7 did not know in advance about the Nova festival held near Kibbutz Re’im, and decided to come to the place after discovering that a mass event was taking place there.” Hamas had intended to attack the nearby settlements in Gaza envelope.
Meanwhile, the statement issued by the Israel police in response to the Haaretz report told a different story. As per The Times of Israel, it said, “The actions of the IDF were beyond the remit of the investigation the source was speaking about.” It also directed the other media outlets to accumulate information from only government officials.
Reversal of truth, says Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “complete reversal of truth. He said denying the existence of the Hamas massacre is “unacceptable.”
However, there are previous Israeli media reports too, accusing the Israeli forces of killing their own citizens. An Israeli broadcaster, Kan, reported that three Israelis were killed by Israeli forces in Be’eri, including two children.
According to the report, Hamas militants were holding Israelis captive in their homes. When the Israeli forces arrived, they did not spare anybody and fired tank shells, killing both Israeli captives and Hamas militants.
In another similar incident, Hamas militants had taken over the local police station in Sderot and held Israeli police captive inside. Israeli forces bulldozed the station after killing both Hamas militants and Israeli police.
Hamas militants’ bodies passed off as Israelis
Moreover, it is important to note that initially Israel had claimed that 1,400 Israelis, including soldiers, police, and civilians, were killed by Hamas, but later the count was revised to 1,200. Israel spokesperson Mark Regev acknowledged that other 200 were Hamas militants or Palestinians who were burned so badly that even Israeli authorities could not identify them. Therefore, they were assumed to be Israelis.
Speaking with MSNBC, a US-based broadcaster, Regev stated, “We originally said, in the atrocious Hamas attack upon our people on October 7, we had the number at 1,400 casualties and now we’ve revised that down to 1,200 because we understood that we’d overestimated. We made a mistake. There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end apparently they were Hamas terrorists.”
