Haaretz: Israeli Helicopter Fire ‘Hit’ Music Festival Attendees on October 7

Israeli officials believe Hamas did not have advanced knowledge of the Nova music festival

An Israeli military helicopter fired and “hit” attendees of the Nova music festival in southern Israel during the Hamas attack on October 7, Haaretz reported on Saturday, citing a police investigation of the incident.

The report reads: “According to a police source, the investigation also indicates that an IDF combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants.”

The police investigation also found that it’s unlikely the Hamas fighters who attacked Israel had knowledge that the music festival was taking place and decided to attack it spontaneously. Bolstering the case is the fact that the festival was originally scheduled to take place on Thursday and Friday and was only approved to continue into Saturday, October 7, earlier that week.

The Haaretz report is the latest evidence indicating the Israeli military was responsible for some of the civilian casualties incurred on October 7 and in the fighting that ensued in the days after the initial Hamas attack. A report from The Grayzone compiled evidence from Israeli media, including a report from the newspaper Yedioth Aharanoth that said helicopter pilots had “tremendous difficulty” distinguishing Hamas fighters from Israelis on the ground.

“The Hamas army, it turns out, deliberately made it difficult for the helicopter pilots and the operators of the UAVs,” the Yedioth Aharanoth report said. “It became clear that the invading forces were asked in the last briefings to walk slowly into the settlements and outposts or within them, and under no circumstances to run, in order to make the pilots think they were Israelis.”

The Yedioth Aharanoth report said the pilots decided to fire anyway. “This deception worked for a considerable time, until the Apache pilots realized that they had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 am that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors,” the report said.

Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.