Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the bloodshed at Kibbutz Be’eri, near the boundary with Gaza, says many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces.
An Israeli woman who survived the Hamas assault on settlements near the Gaza boundary on 7 October says Israeli civilians were “undoubtedly” killed by their own security forces.
It happened when Israeli forces engaged in fierce gun battles with Palestinian fighters in Kibbutz Be’eri and fired indiscriminately at both the fighters and their Israeli prisoners.
“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she told Israeli radio. “There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.
The woman, 44-year-old mother of three Yasmin Porat, said that prior to that, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave.
A recording of her interview, from the radio program Haboker Hazeh (“This Morning”) hosted by Aryeh Golan on state broadcaster Kan, has been circulating on social media.
Notably, the interview is not included in the online version of Haboker Hazeh for 15 October, the episode in which it apparently aired.
It may well have been censored due to its explosive nature.
Porat, who is from Kabri, a settlement near the Lebanese border, undoubtedly experienced terrible things and saw many noncombatants killed. Her own partner, Tal Katz, is among the dead.
However, her account undermines Israel’s official story of deliberate, wanton murder by the Palestinian fighters.
Although it no longer appears on the Kan website, there can be little doubt about the recording’s authenticity.
At least one Hebrew-language account posted part of the interview on Twitter, now officially called X, and accused Kan of functioning as “media in the service of Hamas.”
Porat also gave her account to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.
However, the Maariv story, published on 9 October, makes no specific mention of civilians being killed by Israeli forces.
And in a half-hour interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday, Porat speaks of intense gunfire after Israeli forces arrived. Porat herself received a bullet in the thigh.
Not only does Porat tell Kan that Israelis were killed in the heavy counterattack by Israeli security forces, but she says she and other captive civilians were well treated by the Palestinian fighters.
Porat had been attending the “Nova” rave when the Hamas assault began with missiles and motorized paragliders. She and her partner Tal Katz escaped by car to nearby Kibbutz Be’eri where many of the events she describes in her media interviews took place.
According to Porat speaking to Maariv, she and Katz initially sought refuge in the house of a couple called Adi and Hadas Dagan. After the Palestinian fighters found them they were all taken to another house, where eight people were already being held captive and one person was dead.
Porat said that the wife of the dead man “told us that when they [the Hamas fighters] tried to enter, the guy tried to prevent them from entering and grabbed the door. They shot at the door and he was killed. They did not execute them.”
“They did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely,” Porat explained to a surprised Golan in the Kan radio interview.
“By that I mean they guard us,” she said. “They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently. Luckily nothing happened to me like what I heard in the media.”
“They were very humane towards us,” Porat said in her Channel 12 interview. She recalled that one Palestinian fighter who spoke Hebrew, “told me, ‘Look at me well, were not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.’ Thats what he told me, in those words.”
“I was calm because I knew nothing would happen to me,” she added.
“They told us that we would not die, that they wanted to take us to Gaza and that the next day they would return us to the border,” Porat told Maariv.
In the Channel 12 interview, Porat elaborates that although the Palestinian fighters all had loaded weapons, she never saw them shoot captives or threaten them with their guns.
In addition to providing the captives with drinking water, she said the fighters let them go outside to the lawn because it was hot, especially as the electricity was cut.
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1. Haifa Massacre 1937
2. Jerusalem Massacre 1937
3. Haifa Massacre 1938
4. Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939
5. Haifa Massacre 1939
6. Haifa Massacre 1947
7. Abbasiya Massacre 1947
8. Al-Khisas Massacre 1947
9. Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947
10. Jerusalem Massacre 1947
11. Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947
12. Jaffa Massacre 1948
13. Deir Yassin Massacre 1948
14. Tantura Massacre 1948
15. Qibya Massacre 1953
16. Khan Yunis Massacre 1956
17. Jerusalem Massacre 1967
18. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982
19. Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990
20. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994
21. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002
22.
23. Gaza Massacre 2012
24. Gaza Massacre 2014
25. Gaza Massacre 2018-19
26. Gaza Massacre 2021
27. Gaza Genocide 2023 is still ongoing.
28. DON'T LET ANYONE CONVINCE YOU THAT IT STARTED ON OCTOBER 7th***
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“Since the 7 October attacks, Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of committing sexual violence during its incursion. Many mainstream western media outlets have paid considerable attention to these allegations, despite a lack of concrete evidence. But while reporters must always take such accusations seriously, it is equally important for them to uphold journalistic standards in the process - and there appear to have been serious lapses in that regard.
At the same time, allegations involving Palestinian women in Gaza have received far less airtime.
Despite a UN report citing testimonies from Palestinians who said they were sexually assaulted and beaten while in Israeli detention, the mainstream western media has failed to give this issue much attention.
In addition to the UN report, there are many documented cases of Palestinian women who described sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli forces. Detainees reported being stripped to their underwear, beaten, searched and threatened with rape. Despite all the documented cases of sexual assault, however, Israel has used a single incident to refute them all. After Al Jazeera recently covered an alleged eyewitness account of the rape of a Palestinian woman by Israeli forces at al-Shifa hospital, the network backtracked upon learning the claims were fabricated, with a former managing director saying the woman had misled people “to provoke an emotional response”. After the report was debunked, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz suggested that the UN was wrong to take any such reports seriously. This is a dangerous position, considering that the UN and other human rights groups have recorded myriad other incidents of sexual assault and humiliating treatment of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers. All of this has left us in a situation where Israel, despite being accused of sexual violence in the ongoing war on Gaza, continues to benefit from the silence of mainstream western media - and sometimes the silence of the victims themselves.”
By - Feras Abu Helal
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