Exclusive: October 7 survivor testimony contradicts Israeli military's justification for killing civilians

Yasmin Porat says her Hamas captors did not possess advanced weaponry, contrary to claims by the Israeli Brigadier General who ordered tanks to fire on a house full of civilians.

Yasmin Porat, the first survivor to give testimony about the Israeli military’s infamous attack on a house in kibbutz Be’eri full of both captive Israelis and Hamas militants on October 7, has contradicted the claim of Brigadier General Barak Hiram about why he ordered a tank to fire at the house.

Hiram, the commanding figure on the scene, claimed in an account published in the New York Times that he ordered the tank commander to fire on the house only after Hamas fighters inside launched a rocket propelled grenade at them.

“The negotiations are over,” General Hiram recalled telling the tank commander. “Break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties.”

However, according to Porat, who had exited the house as a human shield for a Hamas commander who had negotiated his own surrender to Israeli forces, there was no RPG attack.

“To the best of my knowledge – and I know very little about gunfire and explosions – but I didn’t hear anything exceptional coming from the terrorist side,” Porat recalled to Uncaptured Media in an exchange conducted by Whatsapp.

Porat’s telling of events pours cold water on the dubious claim of Hiram, which the New York Times published without bothering to verify his claims.

Indeed, no reporting on the incident mentioned any injuries to Israeli soldiers on the scene, and Porat confirmed that she did not see any.

Rather than a defensive attack launched in response, it is clear that Hiram was acting within the construct of the Hannibal Directive, which had been ordered by the military’s supreme command hours earlier in the day.

As reported by the Israeli news site Ynet and translated by The Electronic Intifada, Israel “instructed all its fighting units to perform the Hannibal Directive in practice, although it did so without stating that name explicitly.”

However, the captives were at minimal risk of being taken captive when Hiram ordered a tank to fire on them. Any attempt to leave the house and return to Gaza would have failed.

Other comments made by Hiram in a Channel 12 interview, translated and published by Uncaptured Media, suggest he ordered the tank to fire on the house for more cynical reasons.

One of the soldiers commented to Brigadier General Barak Hiram, the commander leading the operation, that what was happening was a “disgrace.” 

“I know,” Hiram concurred.

Minutes later, the tank fired two shells at the house, one at the floor and one at the roof.

This also contradicts the justification given to Porat by the tank commander when she learned they would fire on the house. She recalls that the commander told her that they were mounting a “rescue operation” and would fire tank shells only at the walls in order to open the way. However, according to the Channel 12 report, the shells targeted the floor and roof, killing everyone inside, except Hadas Dagan, who was injured but survived by luck.

Hiram’s lies

In the months after October 7, Hiram has become a controversial figure in Israel because of his decision to shell the house amid the crisis rather than negotiate with the Hamas captors.

The Electronic Intifada reported that Hiram had lied to a top Israeli journalist, claiming that his forces had attempted to rescue civilians in Be’eri, and that Palestinian militants had carried out executions of 10 Israeli civilians, including eight children, on the kibbutz. 

Since then, the families of Israelis killed by Hiram’s order have demanded the military investigate the incident. 

Former Labor party leader Shelly Yachimovich wrote on X that “There is a violent campaign to prevent any investigation/talk about the incident from hell in which Brigadier General Hiram ordered a tank to shoot and storm the house in Be’eri, knowingly killing 12 hostages, including children.”

Hiram, meanwhile, is heading the reconstituted Gaza division of the Israeli military, which was wiped out in the October 7 attack. In order to clear him of any wrongdoing, Israel’s Channel 14 – a notorious Netanyahu mouthpiece – published a dubious report claiming that the Israeli captives were murdered by their captors before the tank shells were fired. The article quotes military brass telling Hiram that “your appointment as commander of the Gaza division is valid as far as we are concerned - unless you demand otherwise.”