A new document released by the Hamas Media Office claims that Hamas terrorists avoided harming civilians during the October 7 massacre, “especially women, children and elderly people”, and that any targeting of civilians happened “accidentally.”

The 18-page document entitled “Our Narrative: Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, released on Sunday in both Arabic and English, reveals the motives for Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel as well as previously unheard details of what transpired during the siege.

Citing a “religious and moral commitment” to leaving civilians unharmed, the document falsely claims that Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades “only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people", and any civilian casualties that occurred on October 7 “happened accidently and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces.”

Scenes of houses destroyed when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Kibbutz Be'eri, and 30 other nearby communities in Southern Israel on October 7, killing more than 1400 people, and taking more than 200 hostages into Gaza, near the Israeli-Gaza borderl. October 25, 2023. Photo by Edi Israel/Flash90 *** Local Caption *** חיילים איזור קיבוץ בארי מלחמה עזה רחבות ברזל

Though the document claims that harming civilians was not an intention of the October 7 massacre, referred to by Hamas as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, it did not deny Hamas’s kidnapping of Israeli civilians as hostages and insisted that the terrorist organisation “dealt in a positive and kind manner with all civilians who have been held in Gaza and sought from the earliest days of the aggression to release them”.

The report does not mention the condition in which the hostages have been kept, nor that many of those kidnapped were children and elderly people.

Acknowledging that “some faults happened” during the attack, the report attributed any liability to the “rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system” as well as the “chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza.”

The document said allegations of violence committed against civilians were “nothing but complete lies and fabrications”, despite widely publicised video evidence filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves showing the brutal attacks on residents of the kibbutzim in southern Israel.

Footage obtained from GoPro cameras worn by terrorists during the massacre depicts the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians on the streets, in their homes and at the Nova festival. Videos show Hamas militants throwing grenades into safe rooms, setting houses on fire and abducting petrified civilians – including women, children and elderly people - at gunpoint.

International organisations including the United Nations and the International Criminal Court have launched investigations into possible crimes against humanity committed by Hamas militants on October 7. In December, The New York Times published the details of a two-month-long investigation into sexual violence committed against Israeli women during the attacks, combing through extensive evidence to reveal Hamas’ systematic infliction of rape, mutilation and sexual assault.

The recent report by Hamas briefly denied allegations of rape.

An introduction to the document stated that its purpose is to “clarify to our people and the free peoples of the world the reality of what happened on October 7, the motives behind, its general context related to the Palestinian cause, as well as a refutation to the Israeli allegations and to put the facts into perspective.”

The fourth section of the document entitled “A reminder to the world, who is Hamas?” summarises the group’s principles, claiming that Hamas’ conflict is with the “Zionist project” rather than the Jewish people:

“Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”

The report goes on to explain its “rejection to what the Jews were exposed to by Nazi Germany”, claiming that, throughout history, the Arab and Islamic nations were “a safe haven to the Jewish people and to other peoples of other beliefs and ethnicities.”

“We reject the exploitation of the Jewish suffering in Europe to justify the oppression against our people in Palestine,” the report added.

The document concludes with a call to the global “superpower” nations to “stop providing the Zionist entity with cover from accountability, and to stop dealing with it as a country above the law.”