Kfar Aza massacre: Butchered and beheaded children fake news to demonise Hamas?

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said that there was no reliable information about the brutal killings of 200 people and the beheadings of infants in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza. The gruesome news was reported by i24 News correspondent Nicole Zedeck.

"We saw this news, but we do not have either any details or confirmation of this information,” a spokeswoman for an Israeli army unit said commenting on the veracity of the reports.

On October 10 it was reported that the Israeli military allegedly discovered the bodies of beheaded babies. However, neither photographic nor video evidence was provided. The correspondent stated that she took the military at their word.

The channel later published a video with deputy commander of the 71st IDF Paratroopers Detachment, Davidi Ben Zion, who spoke about "hundreds of killed civilians, including babies and children.”

"[Hamas fighters] killed them and cut off the heads of some of the victims. It's terrible to see that… and we all must remember who the enemy is and what our mission is, where the right cause is, and the whole world must be for us," Davidi Ben Zion said.

No objective evidence to prove Kfar Aza massacre

However, Western media could not obtain objective evidence of the Kfar Aza masaacre. Ben Zion said the same in an interview with BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen. The journalist noted that he never asked the officer to show him the bodies of the dead to confirm that they were indeed the bodies of civilians rather than Hamas militants.

The brutal slaughter of hundreds of civilians by Hamas attackers is a gross violation of the laws of war, Jeremy Bowen noted. However, the Israelis reject any comparison between the way Hamas fighters kill civilians and the way Palestinian civilians die as a result of Israeli airstrikes, the British journalist concluded. He confirmed that he had not seen any objective data about the alleged atrocities that Hamas militants committed.

CNN reached out to the Israeli military for comment. The Israeli military could not confirm the exact number of victims nor would they go into detail about how those people were killed, CNN said.

Conflicting parties dehumanise enemy

Methods of black propaganda are commonplace in times of war. Conflicting parties try to dehumanise the enemy to make the public think of the enemy as a cruel aggressor that commits most barbaric atrocities. The purpose of this technique is to instil hatred in the general public for support and unity.

Noteworthy, the enemy demonisation technique has been used since the times of WWI. One of the most commonly known myths is the story of the crucified Canadian soldier who was allegedly captured by German soldiers during the Battle of Ypres on April 24, 1915. The Times published an article on May 10, 1915 saying that the Germans crucified him on a tree. After the war, the German public demanded the Britons should prove the crucifixion episode. The British could only provide unconvincing eyewitness accounts.