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Brigadier General Hannibal and the Prime Minister of Carthage

The Be'eri investigation report [released shortly before this article] is interesting not because of the commander's fault on the ground, but because the Hannibal directive has been, in effect, imposed on the Israeli public for the past nine months.

By Stav Gerstel

Editor Maayan Galili

Translation using Google Translate with minor edits by Bernice Keshet

Date of original publication: 15/7/2024

Original Hebrew text: https://www.rosamedia.org/episodes/articles/43

Translator introduction:

This is an opinion piece describing the IDF's Hannibal directive and its alleged use during the fighting in Kibbutz Be'eri, where 101 kibbutz members were murdered and 31 were kidnapped to Gaza on October 7th, 2023. The piece focuses on the fighting that took place in Pessi Cohen's house, in which Be'eri resident Pessi Cohen and 14 others were held hostage by a group of 40 Hamas fighters. During the battle, two IDF shells were fired at the house from a tank, followed by a SWAT team that was able to break into the house. As a result of the battle, only two out of the 15 hostages survived. The controversy surrounding the incident focused on the commander's decision to fire the shells at the house and its surroundings, and the possibility that this was the cause of death for at least some of the hostages, with conflicting evidence and analyses brought forward by different media sources and IDF reports.

The Hannibal directive, officially formalised in 1986, includes a series of actions to be followed in the case of the kidnapping of IDF soldiers, to allow for a swift response that would thwart the kidnapping attempt by any means necessary, including potentially risking the lives of the kidnapped soldiers. The Hannibal directive was changed multiple times, with each change significantly reducing the actions allowed which may risk the lives of the kidnapped, until it was eventually replaced in 2017 with a new directive, details of which are not available to the public. Public debate in Israel around the Hannibal directive has focused on the moral and social implications of endangering the lives of those taken hostage, influenced, on the other hand, by the growing public pressure to release Israelis taken hostage, as well as the increasing number of Palestinian prisoners released in hostage deals over the years.


The publication of the report investigating the battle at Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7th and 8th 2023 is yet another attempt by the government and the military leadership to evade responsibility. The right-wing Israeli government is using the specific failures highlighted in the investigation, such as the failure to deploy forces to defend the Kibbutz on the morning of the massacre, to place full blame for the events on the IDF. The IDF, in turn, is trying to clear the name of one of the most notorious figures in the Be'eri battle – Brigadier General Barak Hiram, who commanded the [incident that resulted in the – BK] killing of a group of hostages at Pessi Cohen's house. According to the investigation report [see comment below – BK], despite the all-encompassing chaos and lack of coordination during the fighting in the Kibbutz, the "tank's firing at the house's surroundings was carried out professionally," professionalism that ended with the deaths of 13 innocent civilians. The report's authors used verbal gymnastics to explain that it is not certain that the deaths of all of the hostages in the house were directly caused by IDF fire, and that the operational purpose of the fire was not to kill them. In other words, the investigation tries to argue that the hostages' deaths were not part of executing the "Hannibal directive".

Hannibal Barca was a commander from the city-state of Carthage who preferred to commit suicide rather than surrender to his Roman enemies. The Hannibal directive is named after him – it is the infamous IDF order that dictated that in the case of a soldier being kidnapped, every possible measure should be taken to thwart the kidnapping, including firing at the hostage and putting them at risk. This is because of the growing awareness among decision-makers in the military that once a soldier is kidnapped, the Israeli public is willing to pay a heavy price for their release, including freeing enemy fighters from prison or even stopping ongoing combat. After the protocol was exposed to the public and in light of the scandal it caused, the directive was replaced in 2017 with an alternative directive, the details of which have never been published. Even if the Hannibal directive itself is no longer in effect, it is clear that the IDF continues to execute orders in its spirit, and it seems that its use might not be limited just to kidnapped soldiers but also to civilians.

The reason for the outpouring of outrage in the Israeli public, when rumours about the Hannibal directive initially surfaced, is its warped logic, which contradicts our basic moral framework: the assumption that it is better to kill Palestinians than to save Israelis, that the death of one of our own is a price worth paying to avoid a deal that would free terrorists from prison. The cross-sector support within the Israeli public for prisoner exchange deals, such as the Shalit deal [see comment below – BK] and the [ceasefire and hostage release deal] proposal that was on the negotiation table until the bombing of Khan Younis last Saturday, threatens the "Hannibals" whose dominance over Israeli society relies on managing an eternal war: Netanyahu and the senior [IDF] commanders who rose to power under his leadership. The Hannibal directive is the operational response to the life force that stubbornly lingers amongst far too many in the Israeli public – the forcible elimination of any possibility of a deal, to prevent us from having the right to pay the necessary price to see our kidnapped brothers and sisters freed.

The Hannibal rationale transcended the Gaza war from an operational procedure to a broad political strategy. Even if the official goal was not the killing of hostages in Pessi Cohen's house in Be'eri, it is already clear that on October 7th, there was an attempt on the ground to kill the hostages to prevent them from being brought into the Gaza Strip. After its partial failure, the political and military leadership did everything they could over the months of war to complete it. On the political level, Netanyahu is sabotaging any progress in negotiations that could lead to a ceasefire deal and to the release of hostages, and on the military level, the indiscriminate, murderous assault on the Strip takes the lives of more and more hostages, until there will be no bargaining chip left for the Israeli public against Netanyahu. The assassination attempt on Mohammed Deif last Saturday, in which dozens of innocent displaced people were killed in Khan Younis, is another attempt to sabotage negotiations. Again, spilling Palestinian blood is preferred by the government to saving Israeli lives.

But Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians are not the only victims of the Hannibal government. For nine months, we have all been hostages of Netanyahu and his allies in the government and the military, as part of their vicious project to maintain control in Israel and the West Bank by unleashing a catastrophe of historical proportions on Gaza. Israeli soldiers are repeatedly sent to their deaths to maintain and deepen the annihilation [of Gaza], and Israeli society is being dragged deeper and deeper into a nightmare of external and internal violence, repression, poverty, and an increasing risk of death. It is no wonder that the Israeli public is [so] interested in the details of the investigations – we know that no one will admit that this entire war is one big Hannibal directive, and we hope that maybe they will throw us a bone in the form of a low ranking scapegoat, acknowledging that at least on the day of the massacre, the cards were on the table. But as long as the Israeli public still clings, at least emotionally, to its life force and supports a deal – they [i.e. the government] will continue to lie and hide, defer responsibility, clear their friends [from blame], and escalate the killing. Because for them, governing means that killing is preferable to saving lives. In the face of lies and deferred responsibility, we must continue to demand a deal, furthermore – I believe Carthage must be destroyed, and this government must be toppled.

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