Government by morning show

On Saturday, the ABC reported on the apparent use of the infamous ‘Hannibal Directive’ — the IDF’s unofficial protocol to fire on enemy combatants holding Israeli soldiers hostage, even at risk to those soldiers’ lives — on October 7. It described Israeli attack helicopters and Zik attack drones emptying their payloads at vehicles making for Gaza without regard for whether Israeli hostages were inside, and tanks shelling homes in kibbutzes where Hamas soldiers were believed to be hiding with hostages.

The ABC article didn’t break any new ground. It recapped reporting by Haaretz in July, testimony from October 7 survivors published by Yedioth Ahronoth in December, a Haaretz interview with Israeli Air Force reserve colonel Nof Erez, an interview Israel’s Channel 13 conducted in March with Israeli tank captain Bar Zonshein, and the eyewitness account of Neomit Dekel-Chen, a survivor of the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, that was originally published on October 13.

What’s notable is that it was published at all. If you relied on Australia’s largest news outlets for information on what is objectively one of the biggest ongoing stories in the world, you’d probably assume that the genocide in Gaza ended months ago. You probably wouldn’t have much idea that the genocide is a genocide in the first place. (Presumably Chip Le Grand is preparing to ask the ABC journalists who wrote the piece if they consider themselves “October 7 deniers”.)