Why has the mainstream media ignored the recent Hannibal Directive bombshell?

There has been a complete blackout in the mainstream media on the October 7th Hannibal Directive bombshell revealed by Haaretz.

The Story

Recently the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz put out a bombshell report that revealed Israel issued the Hannibal directive on October 7th, an Israeli military doctrine that allows the IDF to kill their own people to prevent them from becoming hostages. The Haaretz report based on documents and testimonies reveals that the command to use this doctrine was issued at the Erez kibbutz as well as the Re’im military base and the Nahal Oz outpost. The report also revealed that the IDF commanded that “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza" and that the border crossing into Gaza should be turned “…into a killing zone, closing it off toward the west”. The report also said that the command was given to kill anyone approaching the border without restrictions saying “… all forces in the area received permission to open fire at anyone approaching the border area, without any restrictions.” While the report could not confirm how many people were killed by this on October 7th it does confirm that “…many of the kidnapped people were at risk, exposed to Israeli gunfire even if they were not the target.”. This is the most conclusive evidence to date that many of the people killed on October 7th were in fact killed by the IDF intentionally because they did not want any hostages taken into Gaza.

The media cover-up

If we had any semblance of a functioning media this bombshell would be front-page news in every media outlet. But this story has been almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press in the West. So far practically no mainstream outlet has covered this story at all. I conducted a search at the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, BBC, Reuters, and AP for “Hannibal Directive” and could find no mention of this story in any of them.

Some of these outlets had mentioned the Hannibal directive in previous stories such as The New York Times in 2016, Washington Post in 2015, Fox News in 2018, and AP in 2018 while other outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, BBC, and Reuters have never mentioned the Hannibal directive. None of these outlets have so far written anything about the Haaretz bombshell proving the use of the Hannibal directive on October 7th. Middle Eastern-based outlets such as Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye along with independent anti-war sites like Truthout and Common Dreams have been some of the only outlets covering this story in English. In the mainstream Western Press, the only mentions of the story I was able to find were a report from the UK Independent, as well as a Yahoo News article republished from the neocon outlet “The Dispatch” that tries to downplay the significance of the report.

The consequences

The outcome of this cover-up is worse than just bad reporting. The mainstream media is hiding information that goes against the narrative used to justify the genocide in Gaza. So far the Israeli-led, western-backed genocide in Gaza has caused at least 38,000 direct deaths and new research from the Lancet medical journal has shown that the current death toll is over 186,000 when indirect deaths caused by the war are included. One of the main justifications for this mass murder campaign has been the October 7th attacks. The Haaretz report that revealed Israel used the Hannibal directive on October 7th shows many of the deaths that day were actually caused by the IDF. The mainstream media along with Israeli and American governments have been caught putting out multiple lies about October 7th including the claims that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, baked a baby in an over, killed a pregnant woman's fetus, and committed mass rape. Now with the revelation that Israel issued the Hannibal directive and told IDF soldiers to turn the Gaza border into a “killing zone”, not to let a single car into Gaza, and to “open fire without restriction” it is not known how many Israeli deaths on October 7th were caused by Hamas and how many were caused by the IDF. This is far from the first time atrocity propaganda has been used to justify a war. In 1990 the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador gave false testimony claiming Saddam Hussien was throwing babies out of incubators that was used as justification for the first Iraq war. Now-debunked claims that Gadaffi was giving his troops Viagra to commit mass rape were used to justify the NATO regime change operation in Libya. There were also claims that he was about to commit a massacre against his own people which were later debunked by a U.K. parliament report in 2015. Yet again the media is doing propaganda and covering up evidence that debunks new atrocity propaganda claims. By ignoring this story the media is covering up evidence that goes against a narrative being used to justify a genocidal war that has caused tens of thousands of direct deaths and hundreds of thousands of indirect deaths. Countless videos of brutal war crimes committed in Gaza come out every day while Israeli government officials repeat openly genocidal statements such as claiming there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. The media coverage of October 7th will go down in history along with the lies used to justify the wars in Iraq and Libya but with even more horrific consequences.