Israel's brazen lies: Civilians and the dead in fake 'terrorist' list

Abdul Aziz al Kafarneh dedicated his life to serving the people of Gaza through various roles.

He worked as a municipal employee, headed the Administrative Affairs Department at Beit Hanoun Hospital, led the Administrators Syndicate in North Gaza, and also taught at the Beit Hanoun School for some time.

At 58, he was serving as the Deputy Mayor of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, a role he had assumed in 2020.

Last week, Israel murdered him, along with tens of other civilians, in a massacre at the Tabaeen School in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Palestinian civilians sheltering there were performing fajr (dawn) prayers when an Israeli airstrike hit the school.

The Israeli army claimed that it targeted 19 Hamas members inside the school compound, despite the attack resulting in at least 100 deaths and dozens of injuries.

Al Kafarneh was among those listed by the Israeli army as a "Hamas emergency committees operative".

However, a family member confirmed to TRT World that he had no affiliation with any political or military organisation.

Mohammed Awad Izzeddin al Kafarneh, maternal cousin of Abdul Aziz al Kafarneh, stated that his deceased cousin was a dedicated public servant who spent decades serving his community.

Israel’s brazen lies

After losing their relatives in one of the bloodiest massacres of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinians began to respond to the Israeli army's list of alleged targets.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that some individuals on the list had already been killed in previous attacks before Saturday's massacre.

Yet, the Israeli army brazenly lied once again.

The human rights group identified some of the 19 individuals listed by the Israeli army, noting their occupations as imams, teachers, or ordinary public workers.

They shared the common trait of not being involved in any political or military activities related to Hamas. In fact, some had even serious disputes with the Palestinian resistance group, according to Ramy Abdo, chairman of the monitoring group.

Abdo said that upon reviewing the list published by the Israeli army, the monitoring group found discrepancies with their own list of victims from the hospital.

“We checked the IDF (Israeli army) list and discovered that some names had already been documented as victims from previous incidents,” he told TRT World.

“We decided to verify all the names and found on social media that some individuals had been mourned by their relatives and friends in the days before the incident.”

Some people on the list, such as Montaser Daher, were already deceased before the Saturday attack. Daher was killed in a previous attack on Friday, a day before the massacre at Tabaeen School.

Social media posts by Daher’s family mourning his death hours before the Saturday attack were shared by Abdo on X.

Another Palestinian civilian, Yusuf al Wadiya, was killed by Israel at his home two days before the massacre.

Ahmad Ihab al Jaabari was also listed by the Israeli army as an “Islamic Jihad operative” to justify the bloody massacre, but it was later revealed that he had been killed in an attack on December 5, 2023.

Following the massacre in Tabaeen school, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari stated in a video that there is a “high probability” that Ashraf Juda, a commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was at the school during the airstrike.

However, he noted that it is not yet clear if Juda was killed in the strike.

Hagari made the unsurprising claim that in recent months, Hamas has increasingly used school buildings as military facilities, command and control centres, and storage sites for weapons.

Since October, Israeli bombs have targeted at least 172 centres housing displaced people, including 152 schools, according to Palestinian media.

Some drew attention to the fact that it took Israeli authorities 16 hours to release a list of “terrorists” they were targeting with the attack.

Muhammad Shehada of Euro-Med suggested that the Israeli authorities “waited for Gazans to post the names of their deceased on social media” and then randomly selected people “who appeared pious or had Hamas-sounding last names” to compile a list.

“Because who's gonna check? Mainstream media? Biden? the EU?” Shehada asked on X.

Accused of committing genocide in Gaza by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel has long fabricated scenarios to justify its actions against over 2 million residents of the besieged enclave.

The lack of international accountability allows Israel to evade consequences, with many world leaders and human rights groups now labelling it a “rogue state.”