Addressing reporters during a press conference with Jewish leaders at the White House on Wednesday, Joe Biden appeared to confirm reports that Israeli babies had been found decapitated at Kibbutz Kfar Aza along the Gaza border after Hamas terrorists withdrew from the area.
“I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children. I never thought I’d ever,” Biden said alongside a group of Jewish leaders.
Several outlets reported earlier this week that the decapitated bodies of babies had been found at the kibbutz in Southern Israel by the Israeli military.
Tal Heinrich, a spokesman for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed the reports on Wednesday afternoon in a statement obtained by CNN.
The babies were found with “their heads decapitated,” Heinrich said while recounting evidence of the massacre that unfolded.
On Tuesday, a local Israeli journalist touring the community made reference to the horrific act. “It’s hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here,” i24 News correspondent Nicole Zedek told viewers. “Babies with their heads cut off, that’s what [the IDF soldiers] said. Gunned down. Families gunned down, completely gunned down in their beds.”
“This is nothing that anyone would have even imagined.”
Independent French journalist Margot Haddat, formerly of CNN, also reported Wednesday that she had seen images of the disfigured infants.
“It’s so macabre that no one wanted to reveal it until they had 100 percent confirmation,” Haddad wrote on X. “It is a horror, a massacre. For those asking for the source. They are multiple: Israeli army, internal intelligence service and atrocious images which reached me and which I was able to cross-check,” she said. “But the best source remains this: courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see/agreed to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.”
Hamas denied brutalizing women and children in a Wednesday statement, despite the extensive evidence of such atrocities disseminated on social media.
“The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas has strongly dismissed the false claims promoted by some Western media outlets, such as Palestinian freedom fighters killing children and targeting civilians,” Hamas said on its Telegram channel.
Initial reports that babies were decapitated drew criticism from journalists critical of Israel.
“The only source for “Hamas beheaded babies” appears to be the Israeli military, which is widely known to spread lies and disinformation Journalists, this is the fog of war. You’ll be seeing all sorts of claims. Don’t amplify unverified, sensational info,” Los Angeles Times reporter Adam Elmahrek wrote on Tuesday morning.
Muhammad Shehada, the chief of communications for a European human-rights organization and contributor to the left-leaning Jewish Forward and Vice, also cast doubt on the reports.
“Turns out the source of the “beheaded babies” canard is an extremist Israeli settler leader, David Ben Zion, who “has a history of calls to genocidal violence” & wiping out entire villages! He literally wishes to see Palestinians ethnically cleansed & the media is helping him!” the writer wrote on X on Wednesday afternoon, despite Biden’s earlier comments.