ISRAEL'S RUTHLESS 'HANNIBAL DIRECTIVE,' ITS WAR IN GAZA AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE HOSTAGES
LINKED TO WAR CRIMES, POLICY CALLS FOR KILLING CAPTURED ISRAELI SOLDIERS, CIVILIANS
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Hadar Goldin and two other Israeli army reconnaissance soldiers were on patrol near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip when they tripped a Hamas ambush during the 2014 Israel-Hamas War.
An enemy machine-gunner opened fire. They shot back. An explosion split the world around them. In seconds, Goldin's two comrades and an enemy fighter were dead. Goldin himself was wounded. He was also alone and cut-off from the rest of his unit.
Hamas militiamen dragged the 23-year-old into a nearby tunnel—a tunnel connected to a vast, spiderwebbed network of tunnels, chambers, and fortified bunkers that make up what is, in effect, a buried Hamas fortress.
Hearing the firefight, other Israeli soldiers rushed to the scene. They discovered the tunnel entrance, but didn't realize Goldin was missing.
"No one really knew what had happened," one of the soldiers, Lt. Eitan Fund, recalls. "Suddenly someone shouted: 'Goldin's gone, Goldin's disappeared!'"
Fund took off his helmet, dropped his rifle, grabbed his pistol and crawled into the cramped tunnel after Goldin.
"If I'm not back in five minutes—I'm dead," he said before vanishing into the dark, boobytrapped hellhole below with two other soldiers.
Fund led the small squad through Hamas's subterranean stronghold. They fired as they went, even though they knew their bullets might hit Goldin. They were underground for 30 minutes. They saw blood trails and some of Goldin's equipment, but not Goldin or his rifle. They also saw other tunnels, weapons and bombs.
They assumed Goldin was alive—though wounded, potentially mortally.
Goldin's unit called for help from surrounding Israeli forces via radio. They used a special code reserved for what Israel's political leadership and military commanders consider to be a battlefield calamity requiring a massive counter-attack: the capture of an Israeli soldier or citizen.
"Hannibal!," they yelled into their radios, "Hannibal!"
10,000-strong pro-Palestinian protest march, New York City, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
As Israel wages war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, once again, its deadly and once-secret Hannibal Directive is again news. Though allegedly disavowed in 2015, it’s back—with a vengeance.
The ruthless Israeli army protocol requires its soldiers use whatever military force necessary to prevent a fellow soldier from being captured by the enemy. Even if it means killing the soldier.
One Israeli commander even ordered his troops to blow themselves up with grenades if that was the only way they could prevent themselves from being captured alive.
Once Hannibal is declared, civilians trapped in the area where the soldier was captured are likely to be killed by the airstrikes and artillery barrages it unleashes—as they were killed by the dozens after Goldin's 2014 capture. Palestinians and Israelis call the massacre Black Friday.
Some legal experts called what Israel did on Black Friday a war crime. Israel was never charged.
Hannibal was created for soldiers, but Israel appears to be applying it to its own citizens in the on-going 2023 Israel-Hamas War.
Hamas seized 243 hostages during the deadly raid on Israel it launched from Gaza on Oct. 7. The bombing campaign Israel is waging in retaliation, against what it says are Hamas targets in Gaza, has so far killed more than 60 of them, Hamas said on Sat.
Hamas hostages Yelena Tropanov, Danielle Aloni and Rimon Kirscht in Hamas propaganda video. Photo credit: Hamas via X.
Hamas says it will release the hostages when Israel releases all the Palestinian prisoners it's holding in its jails—about 4,500.
But Yaakov Amidror, one of three Israeli generals who drafted the Hannibal Directive then served as national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Associated Press the day after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack "this whole issue of captured Israelis will not stop Israel from bombing Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.”
Bezalel Smotrich, a powerful settler leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made finance minister, explicitly argued at a Cabinet meeting at the start of the war that Israel had to “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration.”
In addition to the 60 hostages Hamas says were killed by Israeli bombs in Gaza, more than 1,405 Israelis, including 307 soldiers and 57 police officers, died on Israeli soil during Hamas's Oct. 7 attack. Most were killed by Hamas.
Some were killed by Israeli forces applying the Hannibal Directive, one eyewitness said.
Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the Hamas raid at a kibbutz near the Gaza border, alleged Israeli police and soldiers killed civilian hostages and their captors at the same time.
“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” Porat told Israeli radio.
“There was very, very heavy crossfire” including heavy cannon fire from army tanks, she revealed.
Most armies try to protect their soldiers' from "friendly fire"—including after they've been captured by the enemy.
The American military, for example, didn't bomb POW camps in North Vietnam during the Vietnamese War. Not even after captured Navy pilot Jeremiah Denton blinked "torture" in Morse code during a North Vietnamese propaganda broadcast. If it had, John McCain—another captured pilot—might never have lived to become a Senator and candidate in the 2008 presidential election.
Neither did the American military intentionally bomb POW or concentration camps during World War II. They targeted factories adjacent to camps, but not the camps themselves. American commanders also refused to bomb concentration camps even after reliable intelligence revealed them to be mass murder machines and some Jewish leaders requested it in the spring of 1944.
Israel's militarized society appears to make killing captured soldiers unofficial policy. It's like something from ancient Sparta.
Israel formulated the Hannibal Directive in response to the repeated capture of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon during the 1982 Israel-Lebanon War and subsequent occupation. To free a total of 15 soldiers, Israel released almost 6,000 Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian prisoners between 1983 and 1985.
Israeli armor on the move inside Lebanon, 1982. Photo credit: Associated Press via YouTube.
Israeli generals Gabi Ashkenazi, Yaakov Amidror and Yossi Peled realized they needed to stop it. The hostage-takings and ensuing prisoner exchanges were giving Israel's enemies significant asymmetric victories—even though they could never defeat Israel's conventional military forces in head-to-head combat.
The three generals devised the Hannibal Directive after two more Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanon 1986.
"Together we looked for a way to give our forces the clearest and most categorical instructions for how to act in the event of an Israeli being captured by the enemy," the now 75-year-old Amidror said in April 2023.
“We understood that when it comes to kidnapping, there should be a very clear order so that ordinary soldiers on the ground should not have to hesitate,” the former explained.
The policy they formulated required "everything must be done" to stop the abduction, "even at the price of harming or wounding our soldiers," according to Haaretz.
Two years after the Hannibal Directive was enacted, an Israeli officer told soldiers under his command in 1988 that the phrase "'an IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldier was kidnapped’ no longer features in our lexicon." They "must stop the kidnapping at any price even if it means targeting our soldier," the officer explained. "We prefer our soldier hit than in their hands.”
The Israeli army's attack dog is Battalion 51 of the Golani Brigade.
Before invading the Gaza Strip at the start of the 2008-09 Israel-Hamas War, Battalion 51's commanding officer ordered his soldiers to commit suicide rather than be captured.
The strategic weapon, the 'Judgment Day Weapon' that Hamas wants to acquire, is to capture a soldier.
But no soldier in Battalion 51 will be kidnapped at any price. At any price. Under any condition.
Even if it means that he blows himself up with his own grenade together with those trying to capture him.
Also even if it means that now his unit has to fire a barrage at the car that they are trying to take him away in.
There is no situation. No situation that they will have this weapon.
While the officer is not named in Israeli media reports because of military censorship, he appears to be Col. Avi Peled.
The officer was cleared of wrongdoing after a recording of his orders was broadcast by Israeli television news. Unnamed military sources told the Jerusalem Post "it was clear" he "did not mean that soldiers should commit suicide but that he was trying to motivate them before they entered the Gaza Strip."
Hannibal Crossing the Alps, by Heinrich Leutemann, 19th century via Wikipedia.
Amidror, the retired general who helped devise the Hannibal Directive, claimed the name Hannibal was randomly chosen by a computer. Jewish philosopher Netta Schramm calls that a "myth." To Schram, the name is intended to encourage Jewish soldiers to do terrible, inhuman things—things Rabbis condemn.
Hannibal was a brilliant but brutal Carthaginian general who beat Roman legions in several Second Century B.C. battles. When the Romans finally defeated his forces and closed in to capture him, Hannibal killed himself with poison.
"For an Israeli," Schram writes in her essay on the Hannibal Directive, "Hannibal is an 'other' who, not bound by the local restrictive ethical and religious burden, can do ugly things including even sacrificing children."
To violate "centuries of Judeo-Christian ethical sensibilities," she concludes, Jewish soldiers "must summon up an alternative rule of being."
Israeli censors kept the Hannibal Directive secret from the Israeli public for decades. It was revealed by investigative journalists in 2003.
Gilad Shalit and fiancé, 2020. Photo Credit: Screenshot via Instagram.
The Hannibal Directive “sounds terrible, but you have to consider it within the framework of the Shalit deal," Daniel Nisman, a former Israeli soldier-turned-security expert, told the New York Times in 2014.
"That was five years of torment for this country, where every newscast would end with how many days Shalit had been in captivity," Nisman explained. "It’s like a wound that just never heals.”
Before Goldin's capture, the last time Hamas seized an Israeli soldier alive was during the 2006 Israel-Hamas War. Corporal Gilad Shalit was held five years before Israel agreed to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his safe return. The debate inside Israel whether to yield to Hamas polarized public opinion and paralyzed political leaders.
"Imagine that a 19-year-old American soldier was captured by terrorists and dragged through a tunnel across our border," Bari Weiss wrote."Imagine that the entire nation came to know this soldier’s name and that every day, at schools across the country, children prayed for his release."
"Imagine that pop stars wrote songs about this young man," Weiss, the provocative columnist, added. "Imagine that all of this went on for five years."
Aviva and Noam Shalit, Gilad's parents, accused the U.S. of blocking a deal, the Jewish Chronicle, reported. They organized mass protests to convince their Government to negotiate. In June 2010, the Shalits led a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and promised to camp outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence until he brought their son home.
The 10,000-plus protesters who marched with the Shalits were met by hundreds of counter-protesters. These carried signs declaring "NOT AT ANY PRICE." An editorial in the Jerusalem Post argued "No modern government has the legal right to free terrorists in exchange for its own kidnapped citizens, military or civilian."
Then one day it was suddenly over. Netanyahu made the deal and Hamas released Shalit, pale, gaunt and hollow-eyed but very much alive. Israelis celebrated with a nationwide emotional homecoming.
"I missed my family," Shalit said in an interview with Egyptian TV before he was transferred to Israel. "I hope this deal will promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians."
2d Lt. Hadar Goldin before he was declared killed-in-action during the 2014 Israel-Hamas War. Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Hadar Goldin Foundation.
Shalit hoped his release would promote peace, but to the Israeli army it was "a cautionary tale," Politico reported in 2015.
“Soldiers started talking about it as … better a dead soldier than an abducted soldier," Asa Kasher, an Israeli philosopher at Tel Aviv University who worked with the army, said.
Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, then the Israeli army's chief of staff, reviewed the Hannibal Directive and loosened it after Shalit’s release in 2011. Before Shalit, only high-ranking officers could activate Hannibal. After Shalit, any officer all the way down to platoon leader can.
The range of weapons available was also expanded. Hannibal's original formulation specifically authorized only light-arms and precise sniper-fire. At some point, almost every weapon in the Israeli arsenal was authorized, including planes, helicopters, tanks, drones, bombs, missiles and artillery.
When Goldin's comrades discovered he was missing on Aug. 1, the Commanding Officer of their unit, the Givati Brigade, invoked Hannibal.
“I declared over the radio the word that no one wants to utter —'Hannibal'—which means abduction,” Col. Ofer Winter told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth two weeks later. “I began to plan an assault towards Rafah."
The assault on Rafah Col. Winter's Hannibal declaration unleashed Black Friday.
Israeli air strikes and artillery barrages pounded the Gaza Strip surrounding the area where Goldin vanished. More than 2,000 Israeli bombs, missile and artillery rounds were fired in the first three hours, according to the Israeli military and Amnesty International. They hit four separate neighborhoods.
The heavy-weapons fire was directed at buildings above what the army estimated was the path of the Hamas tunnel Goldin was presumed to have been taken into—potentially trapping Goldin's captors as well as Goldin himself. Israel also targeted what it said were "suspicious persons" and vehicles, including ambulances, in case they were transporting Goldin away.
At least 135 and as many as 200 or more Palestinian civilians were killed. Hundreds more were maimed. It was the deadliest day of the seven-week 2014 Israel-Hamas War—which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians. 67 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians were also killed.
In the hours after Goldin's capture, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "evasive” about it. Israeli military officials told the New York Times they were "uncertain" of his condition. A day later, Israel announced Goldin was dead. They said he'd been killed the day before.
Israel’s military censor informed The New York Times it would have to submit additional reporting relating to the Goldin for review before publishing it—"the first such notification in more than six years."
“Those who kidnap need to know they will pay a price," Col. Winter later boasted. "This was not revenge. They simply messed with the wrong brigade.”
The Israeli army cleared Col. Winter of any wrongdoing and promoted him to brigadier general in 2015.
It also claimed it was cancelling the Hannibal Directive.
Even though Israel’s attempt to prevent Goldin being captured by Hamas came at the cost of at least 135 Palestinian lives, Goldin’s father to this day accuses the Israeli military of not going far enough, for making hospitals "no-go zones."
"The operation to rescue Hadar stalled near the hospital," he wrote Oct. 26 in the Conservative online magazine Tablet, "despite the knowledge that the tunnel Hamas used to kidnap him led there."
"The Hannibal Directive," he lamented, "halted just outside the hospital."
Col. Ofer Winter commanding the Givati Brigade in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 Israel-Hamas War. Photo credit: courtesy Israeli Defense Force.
Who won the 2014 Israel-Hamas War "remains open," military analysts at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center concluded the following winter. "The fragile deadlock between Israel and Hamas remains, with both sides already preparing for the next round."
Nine years later, they're fighting the 2023 Israel-Hamas war—and the Hannibal Directive is back.
Israel has killed almost 10,000 Palestinians in 28 days since the start of the ongoing war. Another 26,000 are wounded. 1,950 are missing, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health says.
More than 3,700 of the known dead are children—six times the 560 children the U.N. reported killed in 19 months of war in Ukraine, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected American calls for a humanitarian pause in Israel’s attack on Gaza on Friday.
"We're continuing with all our force," Netanyahu said. "Israel is refusing a temporary truce that doesn't include the release of our hostages."
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