'Beheaded babies': Horrific atrocity or propaganda?

Updated Oct 14 2023 10:28am ET

The recent terrorist acts that took place during the incursion into Israel by Hamas militants were nothing short of repugnant. The surprise attack caught everyone off guard, not least the Israeli intelligence services, and the Israelis have been predictable in their swift and brutal retaliation.

As the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) moved to recapture lost territory in southern Israel, evidence of horrific and inexcusable acts by Hamas became clear, not least the massacre of young revelers at a for-peace music festival. At least 260 people at the festival are known to have been killed in cold blood.

One claim quickly rose to top volume in media and social media: that babies had not only been killed in the violence, but that some had been beheaded.

What possible difference does it make how they were killed? For the heartrending tragedy itself, none whatsoever. It is a war crime, both unimaginable and unforgivable.

The difference matters only for what comes next. Beheading necessarily involves a level of unthinkably savage depravity, something that utterly transcends human conscience. There is a reason ISIS and other jihadist groups have chosen the public beheading of adult Western hostages as a terror tactic rather than public shootings. The response is far more visceral. And to imagine this barbarity against innocent civilians transferred to infants, the most innocent of all, brings a deep and justified horror.

But did it happen?

On October 10, Nicole Zedeck from Israeli news outlet i24 reported that "one of the commanders said that at least 40 babies were killed, some of them their heads cut off":

'4 days later, they're still continuing to go through some of these houses in this very southern Israeli community, and remove the Israeli citizens that were killed inside their homes'

i24NEWS Correspondent @Nicole_Zedek reports live from Kibbutz Kfar Aza pic.twitter.com/IPG9JAoLkh

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 10, 2023

Fox News, referring to the i24 article, reports:

The IDF were removing the bodies of victims found in the area when they found the children's remains. Israeli soldiers are attempting to use bones to identify the victims, according to the report.

"It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mother, the father, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them," IDF Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv said, describing the scene, i24News reported.

"It’s a massacre."

It is still too early to verify or refute these claims. An Israeli army spokesperson has told the Anadolu outlet that they have no information confirming allegations that Hamas beheaded babies: "We have seen the news, but we do not have any details or confirmation about that."

A Times of Israel article illustrates the third-hand hearsay nature of the claim, saying that "A reporter from i24 News said that an IDF commander told her that they had found the bodies of some 40 babies, some of whom had been beheaded."

Reports on October 11 that the Prime Minister's office and the White House had seen evidence of the atrocity have since been walked back by both.

On October 13, CNN journalist Sara Sidner apologized for repeating the Prime Minister's original claim:

Yesterday the Israeli Prime Minister's office said that it had confirmed Hamas beheaded babies & children while we were live on the air. The Israeli government now says today it CANNOT confirm babies were beheaded. I needed to be more careful with my words and I am sorry. https://t.co/Yrc68znS1S

— Sara Sidner (@sarasidnerCNN) October 12, 2023

This article is not about claiming or evidencing the truth of these claims one way or another. Whether the claims are true or not, they will help to inspire and justify a truly ferocious response. But in the context of the claim, not only Hamas but potentially Palestinians as a people become subhuman, an irredeemable scum to be eliminated at all costs—a genocidal sentiment that is quickly making its way around social media.

The claim may or may not end up being an example of "atrocity propaganda":

Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting.

In this context, sociologists have defined an atrocity as an "event that is perceived as a flagrant violation of a fundamental value" containing three elements:

1. moral outrage or indignation;
2. authorization of punitive measures;
3. mobilization of control efforts against the apparent perpetrators.

A brief history of slain babies in propaganda

Truth is the first casualty of war.

It is possible that this latest claimed atrocity actually occurred. But it's also worth noting that supposed atrocities against babies—the ultimate blameless innocents—have a long history in wartime propaganda. The tearful testimony of 15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ in 1990 before the US Congress, claiming that invading Iraqi soldiers had taken babies from their incubators in Kuwait and left them to die on the floor, galvanized American opinion in favor of the Gulf War. By the time multiple reports determined there was no evidence of the atrocity, the war was over and won.

British propaganda in World War I claimed that German soldiers were bayoneting Belgian babies, then cutting off their hands and eating them—a ludicrous claim that nonetheless had the desired effect of dehumanizing the enemy.

Irish rebels in 1641 were said to have ripped babies from the wombs of English mothers—a false claim used to justify the subsequent barbaric atrocities of Oliver Cromwell against the Irish.

Then there is the late medieval blood libel, a false allegation that Christian children were being abducted and murdered by Jews for religious rituals, including the baking of Passover matzah. The incendiary claim turned Jews from human pariahs into a subhuman threat unworthy of life. Centuries of deadly pogroms were unleashed against Jewish communities across Europe, fueled in no little part by the grotesque myth.

The idea of these sorts of truly horrific acts commands such a visceral reaction that revenge and retribution often spill over into acts of retaliation. Lex talionis, or an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, is a legal maxim that can be found both in the Bible and the preceding law codes of the Ancient Near East. Although talion was the ultimate satisfaction a plaintiff might demand in those times, it was abolished in Palestine in the 5th century BCE.

Atrocities against babies—the ultimate blameless innocents—have a long history in wartime propaganda.

At this very moment, this legal outlook seems to be making an unsavory comeback in the region. Though we may not see Palestinian babies beheaded by IDF personnel, the retaliatory destruction will seek to satisfy the demand for payback. And rather than an eye for an eye, we will likely see a sack of teeth for a single tooth.

As of October 14, the counterattack on Gaza is fully underway, with the Health Ministry of Gaza reporting that the Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 2,200 people, the vast majority civilians, including 724 children, and wounded more than 8,700. The unjustified mass murder of civilians is met with the unjustified mass murder of civilians.

You can currently scan social media comment threads in vain to find one about the Israel-Hamas conflict that does not angrily invoke the beheading of babies as accepted fact and as justification for an annihilatory response. Indeed, we may find evidence comes out in the proceeding hours supporting one version of events or the other, but it will unlikely change the course of events. The damage is done.

Israel is likely looking to favor only one side of the Machiavellian dichotomy: the one that requires an enemy in such a situation be completely destroyed.

In general you must either pamper people or destroy them; harm them just a little and they’ll hit back; harm them seriously and they won’t be able to. So if you’re going to do people harm, make sure you needn’t worry about their reaction.Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

One of the moral issues that faces any such action is best summed up by looking at subsets: All cats are animals but not all animals are cats. All members of Hamas are Palestinian but not all Palestinians are members of Hamas. Any action that rains destruction down on Palestinians as a whole in an attempt to eradicate Hamas might well suffer from the law of unintended consequences. A ruthless retaliation on the Gaza Strip will undoubtedly cause widespread pain and death for many innocent Palestinians who might then be driven into the arms of Hamas.

Any fix to the intractable problem of the Palestine-Israel conflict, such as a two-state solution, will require compromise—and compromise appears to be something to which neither side is prepared to commit.

Claims of beheaded babies, whether accurate or not, escalate the tenor of the conflict to a level without constraints. The "lex talionis with interest" approach is a Machiavellian outcome that will not end well for anyone. But the reality is, can we see it going any other way?