It seems inconceivable that anyone would put a baby in an oven, let alone one still alive.  Yet, this was a claim made in relation to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel between 7th and 9th October 2023.  Leading Zionist activists, such as Ben Shapiro, even showed photographic evidence of the aftermath – the charred corpse of a baby – in their social media posts.  These posts came at the same moment that US President Joe Biden stated he had seen evidence (photographs) of babies having been decapitated by Hamas.

Unfortunately, two different claims from an Israeli journalist at the scene were confused to produce what turned out to be a false claim, that 40 babies had been decapitated.  The separate original announcements were that a decapitated baby had been found and that there were 40 dead babies.  Soon enough, a retraction or roll-back had to be released, though much more quietly, without the fanfare. 

To what extent do such instances of misinformation detract from the reality of what happened?  It might not – let me be cautious – but with historical hindsight such misplaced claims often turn out to be the work of hysteria and propaganda which undermines later consideration of the veracity in what was claimed.  An initial reaction which aims to unify and rally a community behind a specific direction of travel may only sustain such ’unity’ within a dwindling mass of dogmatic adherents as those at the edges slowly fall away, either confused or enlightened.

When the Red Army first arrived at Auschwitz in January 1945 the very first media report highlighted a conveyor belt to which inmates had been attached, then electrocuted, and finally burned and turned to ash in an industrial killing process.  The Nazis had tried to destroy:

“the traces of the electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields.”

(Polevoi, Pravda 2 Feb 1945)

This ‘conveyor belt’ never existed but its reporting certainly drummed up support for what the Red Army (and Allies) were doing – the ’cause’ to eliminate ’evil’. Furthermore, no film footage was taken at the time of liberation, so the Soviets took all the children they had found in the camp back to Auschwitz a month later to produce the iconic footage of children showing their prisoner tattoos through a barbed wire fence. If an opportunity had been missed, then ‘a’ reality had to be recreated. This recreation may have been near to the truth (holding verisimilitude) but it also opened the door on Holocaust denial – the authorities were not telling the ‘truth’!

With regards to the Hamas-led terrorist attack of 7th October, the now retracted claim about 40 beheaded babies continues to circulate widely on social media with an afterlife of its own.  When I went to primary school in the 1970s the story of German troops skewering Belgian babies on their bayonets remained in circulation half-a-century later.  Needless to say, the story wasn’t true and just an early piece of World War 1 ‘allied’ propaganda.

Mainstream media (MSM) outlets are more cautious – they face oversight and judicial review. Thus, in a list of victims published by Israeli news service Haaretz (on 23 Nov 2023), there were only 17 Israeli victims under the age of 18 years, with the youngest (where age is stated) being 4. No ‘babies’ were listed. This list covers both civilian and service victims of 7th October and military personnel killed in the subsequent war (which continues to mount in early Dec 2023). The list is not (currently) comprehensive, but whilst whole sections display the names of Thai overseas workers and Nepali students, there are (still) no ‘babies’.

Such victims may remain ‘nameless’ due to the death of their parents / families and rules on privacy, but at this point (9 weeks on) we should expect at least some of their names and stories (despite their young age) to be notified, to start appearing, in a ‘special section’. Not least because the ‘story’ would be central to the Israeli side in discussions around justifying their actions.

Accepting the photograph of charred remains as genuine, then some babies must have been murdered – but how many, and how many met horrible deaths such as beheading or being baked alive?  And should we care whether the latter were the ‘rule’ or the ‘exception’?

Lucky to be Alive

In the aftermath, UK’s Channel 4 interviewed a couple in Ofakim (the town furthest east reached  by the Hamas-led encroachment), who had been held hostage by terrorists for 18 hours.  The woman (and a neighbour) fed her captors chicken and rice and dressed their wounds, putting her survival down to an ability to talk the couple’s persecutors around, which seems strange given the terrorists original murderous intent.  The couple then pointed to a corner in the room where they managed to survive – they don’t know how! – once the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) arrived.  After surviving 18 hours at the hands of terrorists, the closest they came to death was when the IDF began pummelling their house.  It was riddled with bullet holes.  Where these created by the terrorists firing ‘out’ or the IDF firing ‘in’?  Reasonable conjecture would immediately say ‘both’.

Did the IDF know that an Israeli couple were being held captive in the property? Not knowing would excuse their actions; but could they have checked or undertaken a risk assessment? Alternatively, did their decision making amongst the chaos and panic place their desire to kill the enemy above the need to preserve the lives of their own citizens? Was it just a case of ‘there is fire coming from that building so we need to take it out?’ And did it matter ‘who’ could be inside?

Not so Lucky

This Ofakim couple were not alone in being held hostage in their own home, and neither were Channel 4 in finding accounts of ‘standoffs’ between Hamas and IDF forces. The following is from a BBC report about the loss of two 12-year-old twin girls (Yannai and Liel Hetzroni-Heller):

“Israeli media has reported the children, who were British-Israeli, were held hostage by Hamas gunmen in a building that caught fire during a stand-off with Israeli forces.”

This line sits unobtrusively within an article that places the blame squarely on Hamas, who only came to the girl’s kibbutz to “kill, murder, maim Jewish children, babies, parents and old people” (their father, quoted by the BBC – my emphasis to make a connection with the above claims). Yet, this example also begins to indicate a pattern, with the most dangerous period for many Israeli hostages being the arrival of their IDF rescuers.

Apache Hellfire

What about places well inside the territory taken by Hamas and other terror groups (plus a few criminal gangs and marauding civilians from Gaza), where the IDF could not reach and would not reach for (up to) another 36 hours?  Max Blumenthal (in an article on The Grayzone) refers to accounts, reported by Haaretz, of IDF Apache helicopter pilots being sent up to eliminate the enemy without clear instructions about where to go or intelligence on how to identify the enemy, to target them as distinct from their own citizens.

On the ground was confusion, with uniformed Hamas fighters working alongside non-uniformed attackers from other groups, plus the presence of kibbutz security guards carrying guns whilst in civilian clothing.  Terrorists hijacked local Israeli cars (having arrived by paraglider or on foot) and transported kidnap victims in those same cars (and in one case a ‘golf cart’).  Where cars could not travel they marched hostages back to Gaza in lines.  Yet, as Blumenthal notes, the Apache pilots were under pressure to unload the entire “belly” of their helicopters  They did this, returned to base, reloaded, and returned to do the same.  But who were they aiming at?  An obvious question needs to be asked, to which there is no clear nor easy answer – how many Israeli citizens were killed by IDF forces?  And what kind of death did they meet?

Why place baby in an oven? Why call a missile ‘Hellfire’? Not always but sometimes simpler explanations provide a more obvious answer. Hellfire missiles burn and scorch their living targets to death – instant immolation. Of course, the alternative account ‘could’ still be the true one. And the counter argument from Israeli journalists is that Hamas’ crimes are being played down by any attempt to question how lives were lost and that some could have been from an “exchange of fire”.

But a key point is that we don’t know (at the moment), and may never know, due to the febrile atmosphere and the way in which alternate narratives emerge. Thus, can the Israeli-American account be trusted any more than that of the “Hamas-run” Ministry of Health? Are the Israeli couple in Ofakim really part of a ‘conspiracy theory’ (and asking the questions I ask has been deemed as touting ‘conspiracy’!) to reduce Hamas’ culpability, or are they just telling their story as they experienced it?

Just as babies in 1914 Belgium had to go onto the end of bayonets, babies in 2023 Israel have to go inside ovens. It is such imagination (and not evidence for such events taking place) which drives forward the actions of ‘justified war’. And as David Hume noted, it is reason which serves the passions and not the other way around (i.e., whatever your passion, you will find a reasoned justification for it). The central issue for the establishment of peace is always how to change people’s ‘passions’ – what is it that different people desire and how can their desires (plural) be made common – a shared passion producing a shared vision. It would appear that a secular ‘religion’ (rebinding of the community) is required. But as the Anti-defamation League know only too well: baby ‘libels’ pull people in opposing, divisive directions.