The prime minister’s office took the extraordinary step Thursday of sharing gruesome photos of murdered babies with reporters and the public to highlight Hamas’ atrocities in its brutal rampage through southern Israel on Saturday.
The Times of Israel publishes heavily blurred versions of the published photos.
A spokesman for the PMO told the Times of Israel that the reason for disseminating such images was simple: “so that the world would see only a fraction of the horrors wrought by Hamas.”
The PMO said the released photos were part of what was shown to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier on Thursday, adding that they were “hard-to-see images of babies murdered and burned by the monsters of Hamas became”. Hamas are not people. Hamas is ISIS.”
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The official Israeli Twitter account decided to share the largely unblurred images with its 1.2 million followers.
The move came after some media figures critical of Israel expressed doubts about some of his claims about atrocities committed by Hamas, as the terrorists infiltrated cities, murdered entire families, set people on fire, raped women, killed children and kidnapped more than 150 people caught.
A now blurry photo released by the Prime Minister’s Office on October 12, 2023, showing a baby murdered by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7. (Prime Minister’s Office)
The heated debate, especially at
“I’ve been doing this for a long time. “I never thought I would see confirmed images of terrorists beheading children,” US President Joe Biden said in talks with US Jewish leaders at the White House on Wednesday evening.
The White House later said the president had not seen any images or independently confirmed such reports, but had based his comments on various media reports citing Israeli officials.
A now-blurred photo released by the Prime Minister’s Office on October 12, 2023, showing the charred body of a baby murdered by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7. (Prime Minister’s Office)
In a conversation with Biden on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the president: “They took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them. “They beheaded soldiers, they mowed down these young people who came to a nature festival.”
In his own comments on Thursday in Tel Aviv alongside Netanyahu, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed that he had seen shocking images of the atrocities.
Blood covers the floor of a Be’eri resident’s bedroom, October 11, 2023. (Times of Israel/Canaan Lidor)
“It is impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed – such as the mother, father and three small children who were murdered while seeking refuge in their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz – and not think of my own children Blinken said.
“This was just one of countless terrorist attacks by Hamas – in a litany of brutality and inhumanity that is indeed reminiscent of the worst of ISIS. Babies slaughtered. Body desecrated.
“Young people were burned alive. women raped. Parents were executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents,” Blinken said.
“How are we even supposed to understand this, digest this?”
The death toll in Israel surpassed 1,300 people on Thursday, most of them civilians, as authorities continued to find and identify human remains in several Gaza border towns overrun by Hamas.