Hannibal Directive

Hannibal Directive (soldier,  orders)
Interest of	Benny Gantz
“The author refers to the infamous 'Hannibal Directive', which compels the Israeli army to kill Israelis rather than let them be taken hostage.”

The Hannibal Directive (or "Procedure" or "Protocol") is a controversial procedure used by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces.

Background

It was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and the subsequent controversial prisoner exchanges. The full text of the directive has never been published and until 2003 Israeli military censorship even forbade any discussion of the subject in the press. The Hannibal Directive has been changed several times. At one time the formulation was that "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces."

The Hannibal Directive has, at times, apparently existed in two different versions, one top-secret written version, accessible only to the upper echelon of the IDF, and one "oral law" version for division commanders and lower levels. In the latter versions, "by all means" was often interpreted literally, as in "an IDF soldier was 'better dead than abducted'". In 2011, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz stated the directive does not permit killing IDF soldiers.

Past incidents

The Hannibal Directive has not prevented the capture of a single Israeli soldier. Among the 11 Israelis involved in the seven reported Hannibal incidents, only one soldier (Gilad Shalit) survived. In his case the declaration of Hannibal occurred too late to have any influence on the course of events. There is however only one case where Israeli forces have been officially confirmed to be directly responsible for an Israeli death.

More recently

On 23 October 2023, Jonathan Cook posted on X:

So much space continues to be dedicated to the Hamas attack more than two weeks on (from the start of the October 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict). But the article linked below is a rare attempt to try to piece together the events of 7 October 2023 without simply relying on Israel's official, increasingly strained narrative.

The author refers to the infamous 'Hannibal Directive', which compels the Israeli army to kill Israelis rather than let them be taken hostage. It usually applies to military personnel, and has been used a number of times in the past.

But the author points out there are plenty of indications to suggest it was applied *as policy* towards Israeli civilians during the Hamas attack. In other words, the army appears to have preferred to kill both the Israelis and Hamas militants holding them in communities near Gaza rather than try to negotiate a release.

Were a significant number of the 1,400 Israelis who died during the Hamas attack killed as a result of intentional efforts to stop them being taken by Hamas into Gaza?

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Goldstone: An act of negligence	Article	4 April 2011	Noura Erakat	Downplay of Israeli aggression towards civilians during the Gaza War, causes scholars to question Richard Goldstone. Regardless of what may have been his best intentions, Goldstone has negligently, one hopes not deliberately, undermined the laws of armed conflict and emboldened those states, like Israel, who believe that it is a surmountable nuisance.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 23 October 2023.
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