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Countering the Oct. 7 Deniers

Neo-Nazis from the so-called “Goyim Defense League” display a Holocaust denial banner in San Antonio, Texas. Photo: Twitter.
JNS.org – Jews have long been accustomed to being history’s double victims. We are victims of its most murderous currents and the victims of subsequent attempts to revise, play down or even outright deny these episodes of bloodshed, usually emanating from the perpetrators themselves or their fellow travelers.
The most glaring example of this trend is Holocaust denial. And the one thing we have learned from dealing with the deniers is that they are impervious to fact and reason. They engage in denial because their hatred of Jews predisposes them to conspiracy theories about Jewish power and Jewish dishonesty. You can patiently explain the milestones of the Nazi genocide—the anti-Jewish legislation of the 1930s, the Wannsee Conference convened by the Nazis in 1942, the shift in the method of killing from extermination by gunfire to industrialized slaughter in gas chambers and the obsessive antisemitic ideology underlying all this—but you’d be wasting your breath on these people.
There are other examples outside of the Holocaust. In the Arab and Islamic worlds, where antisemitism ironically runs rampant, the myth that Jewish communities lived in peaceful harmony with their Muslim neighbors until the Zionists began “colonizing Palestine” prevails. Among Communist apologists—sadly, a growing trend today, more than 30 years after the Cold War ended—the Soviet wartime dictator Josef Stalin is seen as a symbol of anti-fascism, whose postwar antisemitic campaign, reminiscent of the excesses of Russia’s imperial czars, is portrayed in these circles as a willful “Zionist” attack on his reputation.
The Hamas-led pogrom in Israel on Oct. 7, has not been spared from these efforts. But while the methods are much the same as the examples I cited—especially by taking small nuggets of fact and turning them into full-blown conspiracy theories—the context is different. Technology now provides a platform for anyone to declare himself or herself a “historian” or a “journalist,” and to purvey lies by turns monstrous and ridiculous using those professions as a cover. The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker put it best in a recent opinion piece analyzing the spread of antisemitic tropes on the nationalist right: “Our culture is dominated by people with epic levels of historical, economic and scientific ignorance.”
When it comes to the Oct. 7 atrocities, there have been similarly epic levels of social media posts denying the gang rapes, mutilations and mass slaughter that took place on that dark day. One popular theme spread by organizations like “Code Pink,” a pro-Russian advocacy group based in the United States that masquerades as a peace movement, and online publications like the Grayzone, which functions as an outlet for Russian and Iranian propaganda, is that Israel itself was responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths, rather than the Hamas terrorists and the thousands of ordinary Palestinians who joined them for the onslaught.
The underlying claim here is that the so-called “Hannibal Directive”—an Israeli military protocol introduced in 1986 to prevent the capture of Israel Defense Forces personnel by terrorist groups, which was abandoned by the military’s top brass in 2016—was operational during the assault. “The Hannibal Directive,” noted the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent organization that monitors political and religious extremism around the world, “has been central to false claims that Israeli security forces killed as many or more civilians than Hamas, and in downplaying well-documented war crimes against civilians.”
Last week, a report prepared for the British parliament on the Oct. 7 pogrom entered this melee. Written by Lord Andrew Roberts, the eminent historian whose output includes magisterial biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte and Winston Churchill, the harrowing report is the most comprehensive account of the Hamas land invasion issued so far. It painstakingly documents the unfolding of the slaughter across more than 40 distinct locations. It spares no details, and so we learn, inter alia, how 3-year-old Abigail Idan, daughter of the murdered Ynet journalist Roee Idan, “crawled out from under her father’s body and took refuge at a neighbor’s house.” Or how Bar Kislev, a resident of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, watched from hiding as a squad of killers, some as young as 14, broke into apartment after apartment screaming “Kill the Jews!”, pausing for snacks and cigarettes along the way. Or how the body of Itai Hadar, a 28-year-old attending the Psyduck festival (a smaller psychedelic trance music party that took place at the same time as the better-known Nova festival a few kilometers away), was booby-trapped with grenades after his murder. Indeed, the 381 pages of the report are replete with stories like these, all of them forensically accounted for.
Yet, as Roberts explains in his foreword to the report, its purpose was not simply to provide a comprehensive record of what happened. “Holocaust denial took a few years to take root in pockets of society, but on 7 October 2023 it took only hours for people to claim that the massacres in southern Israel had not taken place,” he wrote. The report, therefore, was prepared “to counter such pernicious views and to lay down incontrovertible proof—for now, and for the years to come—that nearly 1,200 innocent people were indeed murdered by Hamas and its allies, and very often in scenes of sadistic barbarism not seen in world history since the [Imperial Japanese Army’s] Rape of Nanjing in 1937.”
In the days since the report was released, Roberts’ social media accounts have been inundated with abuse from Oct. 7 deniers. “This is the kind of thing we’re up against, and why people should read the Report and decide for themselves if it’s ‘Zionist propaganda,’ or detailed, fully footnoted and irrefutable proof of the atrocities from multifarious impeccable sources,” he posted in response to one such missive. I don’t believe that Roberts seriously thinks that his report will change the minds of those in thrall to the denial agenda. The abiding value of his work is that, when it comes to the detail and quality of his research, it offers an impressive counterweight for undecided readers who will encounter the deniers as they seek the truth.
Even so, given the epistemic crisis that envelopes public discourse these days, we would be naïve to expect that everyone will be persuaded of the truth. Like the struggle against antisemitism, the struggle against denialism has no end in sight.
The post Countering the Oct. 7 Deniers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.