Source of dubious ‘beheaded babies’ claim is Israeli settler leader who incited riots to ‘wipe out’ Palestinian village

After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden, Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim.

An international outcry erupted when Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border. President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October 10 White House Rose Garden address while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny.

According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets. 

The Grayzone has now identified a key source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies. He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.

In an October 10 interview with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network, Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists. They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women. But we are stronger than them.” 

He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”