Does this clip show Israeli Apache helicopters shooting their own citizens on Oct 7?

Question

A Tweet in French with some 200K+ views (and some thousands of likes/retweets) claims

Des images inédites ont fuité où ont voit des hélicoptères israéliens Apache bombarder ces propres concitoyens pendant le festival de rave le long de la route le 7 octobre. L’armée de Tsahal ni les responsables politiques israéliens se sont exprimés pour l’instant.

Translation:

Unedited images have leaked which show Israeli Apache helicopters bombing their own co-citizens during the rave festival along the road [? unsure on context – ed.] on October 7. Neither the IDF nor the Israeli politicians in charge have commented yet.

Essentially that "Israeli Apache helicopters were bombing their own citizens" on Oct 7. And that the IDF "didn't comment" on the clip.

OTOH, the clip appears to have the IDF PR unit logo, so it seems fairly implausible that the IDF would release something like that unless the targets were terrorists.

So, is the clip showing real events, and whom does the clip actually show being shot at?

Answer 1

The footage hasn't recently emerged as the tweet claims, but is available since at least Oct 9th with the description:

Israeli AH-64 Apache attack helicopters engage Hamas militants with 30mm chain gun fire and Hellfire missiles

We also have extensive video evidence for what happened at the festival, namely that it was attacked by Hamas. Some footage is linked to in the context note under this tweet: https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1722514874452877492 (which is an english-version tweet of the original claim). The videos are very much NSFW. They do not show an attack helicopter.

Answer 2

The video was contextualized in a Ynet article.

https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b111niukzt

After the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian, a decision was made that the first mission of the combat helicopters and the armed Zik drones was to stop the flow of terrorists and the murderous mob that poured into Israeli territory through the gaps in the fence.

The article is worded confusingly but it might be saying that because the militants were walking at a normal pace they could not be distinguished from unarmed civilians crossing the border for fun (in the midst of an invasion!). Therefore the helicopters fired at anyone crossing the border from the Gaza to Israel direction, but not at Israeli civilians.

However, it might also be interpreted as justifying indiscriminate fire. See the Haaretz article referenced in another answer below.

Answer 3

There is a more detailed article about this in The Gray Zone website. They collected almost all details from relevant news. (interviews with the apache pilot, witnesses, etc.) Here are some parts of the pilot interview:

In an interview with Israel’s Mako news outlet, one Apache pilot reflected on the tortuous dilemma of whether to shoot at people and cars returning to Gaza. He knew that many of those vehicles may have contained Israeli captives. But he chose to open fire anyway. “I choose targets like that,” the pilot reflected, “where I tell myself that the chance that I am shooting here on hostages as well is low.” However, he admitted that his judgment “was not 100%.”

“I understand that we have to shoot here and quickly,” the commander of the Apache unit, Lt. Col. E., told Mako in a separate report. “Shooting at people in our territory – this is something I never thought I would do.”

Lt. Col. A., a reserve pilot in the same unit, described a fog of confusion: “I find myself in a dilemma as to what to shoot at, because there are so many of them.”

And another Fact check is published in Fact Crescendo. Here are a few lines from it:

The video shows missiles hitting cars, trucks, motorcycles, and people on foot as pilots report hundreds of gunmen sweeping into Israel to attack nearby communities, the Times of Israel reported. (Archived)

However, there have been few reports, like that of this interview with Yasmin Pora, a survivor of the bloodshed at Kibbutz Be’eri near the boundary with Gaza, that state that Israeli forces could have unintentionally killed their own.

She states that Israeli civilians “undoubtedly” were tragically killed by their own security forces during the intense confrontation while the Hamas fighters were trying to take back the captured Israeli hostage inside Gaza. The same was detailed in this Israeli news report as well.

Update (2023-11-19):

Al-Jazeera reported:

The police investigation also found that an Israeli military helicopter opened fire on the assailants but also hit some people attending the festival. No further details were provided, Haaretz reported.

“An investigation into the incident revealed an [Israeli military] combat helicopter that arrived at the scene from the Ramat David base fired at the terrorists and apparently also hit some of the revelers there,” the news report cited an unnamed police official as saying.