Israeli Defense Minister Admits To Use Of Hannibal Directive On October 7th

Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Admits That Israel Killed Their Own People On October 7th.

The Bombshell Admission

Recently Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, who served from 2022 to 2024 and has an arrest warrant issued against him from the International Criminal Court for the “war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts” gave his first interview since resigning as Defense Minister.

In the interview, he was finally pressed on Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive-the military doctrine that calls on Israeli forces to kill their own civilians to prevent them from becoming hostages-on October 7th, and he admitted to it.

In the interview clip, dug up by the Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley and translated by journalist David Sheen he admitted to issuing the military doctrine on October 7th. Here is a transcript of the clip:

Interviewer #1: When you see the convoys crossing the border with Israeli hostages, what crosses your mind? Is the Hannibal Directive something you are thinking about at that moment?

Interviewer #2: Just to explain, the Hannibal Directive says to shoot and kill when there is a vehicle containing Israeli hostages.

Gallant: I want you to understand that the ability of the defense minister to give timely operative instructions when everything is happening is very limited.

Interviewer #2: Was the order given for the Hannibal Directive?

Gallant: I think that tactically in various places it was given, and that in other places it was not given, is that a problem?

This bombshell admission marks the first occasion of a top Israeli official admitting that Israel gave the Hannibal order to “shoot and kill when there is a vehicle containing Israeli hostages” on October 7th.

What Gallant Left Out.

This is a stunning admission that proves once and for all that Israel indeed did kill their own people on October 7th. However, by claiming that the Hannibal Directive was only issued in “various places” Gallant is undermining the reality of its widespread use and impact on October 7th.

The full scope of Israel’s use of the Hannibal Directive on October 7th was laid out in July of last year in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The paper reported that “at 7:18 A.M” on October 7th, the IDF gave the order “Hannibal at Erez” calling for the Hannibal directive to be issued at the Erez border crossing. The order was given again by the IDF at “7:41 A.M”.

Haaretz also reported that the order to do the Hannibal Directive was also given at “Re'im army base, where the divisional headquarters were located, and the Nahal Oz outpost in which female spotters were based.”

Haaretz reported that after the Hannibal Directive was ordered at these three locations, another order was given at 11:22 am that “no vehicle would be allowed to return to Gaza”, even though “everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers”.

Haaretz reported that the order was given to “turn the area around the border fence into a killing zone”.

The Australian state-funded outlet “ABC News” further elaborated on the scope of this operation. Their report quoted former Israeli Air Force colonel Nof Erez who called the Israeli response on October 7th “a mass Hannibal” and admitted that the IDF shot at “thousands of people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without”.

The report also quoted the Israeli newspaper “Yedioth Ahronoth” which “found 70 vehicles were destroyed by Israeli aircraft and tanks to prevent them being driven into Gaza, killing everyone inside.”.

The paper wrote “It is not clear at this point how many of the abductees were killed due to the activation of this order on October 7.”

While it is true we do not know how many Israelis were killed through the Hannibal Directive an educated guess can be made.

The Electronic Intifada's Asa Winstanley pointed out that given the fact that the cars going into Gaza contained many hostages, the cars shot by the Israeli military likely contained several hostages. As he wrote in his investigation:

It is unknown how many Israelis those 70 vehicles contained, but given what is known about other incidents, some cars probably contained several. These vehicles alone may have accounted for a very large number of Israeli civilian deaths.

Palestinian captors often packed multiple Israeli prisoners into pickup trucks, expropriated cars and even in some cases trailers dragged by tractors.

Fleeing Israelis did likewise.

Winstanley pointed out that given the fact that the Israeli military fired at “1000 targets” this likely could have resulted in 100s of Israeli deaths if those targets were vehicles. As he wrote:

The drone operators seem to have been even more deadly than the helicopter pilots. The 7 Days piece says they often “took decisions to attack” by themselves and that by the end of the day on 7 October, “the squadron performed no fewer than 110 attacks on some 1,000 targets, most of which were inside Israel.”

If “targets” includes individual persons, it’s hard to know how many would have been Israelis. The pilots probably often did not know themselves. If a hit “target” also includes individual cars, the 1,000 targets hit could have easily resulted in hundreds of dead people.

The Most Vile Mainstream Media Cover-Up In History

To this day, the mainstream media in the West has yet to cover the fact that the Hannibal Directive was issued on October 7th, despite the facts laid out in the Haaretz and ABC news articles along with this stunning admission from Yoav Gallant.

Instead, they have continued to repeat the claim that Hamas killed “1,200 Israelis” on October 7th, despite the undeniable fact that at least some of them were killed by the IDF through the Hannibal Directive order and ensuing indiscriminate fire on all vehicles returning to Gaza. They have also continued to repeat the claim that Hamas committed “mass rape” on October 7th despite the fact that the claim has been thoroughly debunked.

These are not innocent mistakes but instead, a propaganda campaign to manufacture consent for Israel’s mass murder campaign which Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called a genocide, the International Court of Justice has called a “plausible genocide” and the International Criminal Court has called “crimes against humanity and war crimes”.

By covering up the Hannibal Directive, the mainstream media is hiding evidence that refutes propaganda used to justify Israel's bombing of Gaza where nine out of every 10 people killed was a civilian, 70 percent of the people killed were women and children, “the ages most represented among the dead” were “five to nine-year-olds” and “80% of victims were killed in residential buildings”.

Recently U.S. President Donald Trump-after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu-said that Gaza’s population is currently “1.7 or 1.8 million people”. Given the fact that Gaza’s population before Israel’s genocide was “between 2.2 and 2.3 million”, this means that Israel may have killed 500,000 Palestinians. By covering up the Hannibal Directive, the mainstream media is doing propaganda to justify this mass murder campaign.

There have been many mainstream media failures, but the Hannibal Directive cover-up is perhaps the deadliest.