In the weeks and months following October 7, a familiar and poisonous pattern resurfaced. Many anti-Israel agitators - and, sadly, even some well-meaning friends overwhelmed by the tsunami of conspiracy theories online - embraced the claim that Israel itself orchestrated a “false flag” attack in order to justify what they call “genocide” in Gaza.
In this context, “false flag” refers to the conspiracy theory that Israel intentionally allowed - or even staged - the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 7 as a pretext for a large-scale military campaign against Gaza. Conspiracy theorists point to reports that Israeli intelligence had intercepted signs of Hamas’s preparations almost a year earlier, and that the army failed to reinforce the southern border or launch a preemptive strike. To them, the absence of immediate Israeli resistance or forewarning becomes “proof” of a deliberate setup - a supposed plan by Israeli leaders to sacrifice their own citizens in order to justify a genocidal war.
This accusation is not analysis. It is a blood libel repackaged for the digital age.
The idea of the “false flag” originates in military deception, when ships or armies would act under another nation’s flag to conceal their identity and provoke a reaction. In modern times, it describes any act of deliberate self-inflicted harm meant to shift blame to others. When applied to Israel, the term is twisted beyond recognition - not as an allegation of deceit, but as a moral inversion that portrays victims as perpetrators.
The Historical Echo: Blood Libels Reborn
This is not the first time Jews have been accused of secretly orchestrating their own suffering. In medieval Europe, Jews were charged with murdering Christian children to use their blood for Passover matzah. Later, they were blamed for poisoning wells during the Black Death, sparking massacres across the continent.
In modern times, these lies have evolved into conspiracy theories: that the Mossad was behind 9/11; that Israel assassinated Charlie Kirk, one of its staunchest allies; that Jews control global finance and the media. The more outrageous the accusation, the more believable it becomes to those predisposed to hate.
The October 7 “false flag” theory fits this same pattern. It is not built on evidence or logic but on centuries of prejudice recycled through social media.
The Reality: Catastrophic Failure, Not Conspiracy
The truth behind October 7 is tragic but straightforward. It was not a calculated deception; it was a monumental failure of judgment and interpretation within Israel’s intelligence and security establishment. Layers of warning signals were missed, misclassified, or dismissed - not because of intent, but because of a collective cognitive bias that blinded military echelon decision-makers to what Hamas was truly preparing.
Intelligence does not arrive as a clear message reading “attack coming.” It emerges as fragments - intercepted conversations, drone images, field reports, and chatter - that must be pieced together by analysts and commanders. Those fragments are always filtered through prevailing assumptions. When the dominant belief was that Hamas was deterred and seeking quiet, even disturbing evidence was rationalized to fit that expectation.
Only weeks before the massacre, Israel had engaged in a short conflict with Islamic Jihad. Hamas conspicuously stayed out. That absence reinforced the mistaken belief that Hamas wanted calm. So when Hamas trained for large-scale infiltrations, dug tunnels, or rehearsed assaults, those activities were interpreted as defensive measures rather than preparations for invasion.
It was a fatal concept failure - a collapse of analytical objectivity - not a premeditated plan.
Warnings were raised but ignored. A detailed Hamas attack blueprint was obtained and shelved as “unrealistic.” The Nova music festival was not classified as a potential target. These were grave professional errors, but they point to bureaucratic complacency, not conspiracy.
Conspiracies require near-perfect secrecy and absolute discipline. Israel’s intelligence and defense systems involve thousands of people - analysts, field officers, political leaders, and independent agencies - each with overlapping oversight. To coordinate a self-inflicted mass casualty event of this scale without a single leak or whistleblower is simply impossible. In Israel’s democratic and argumentative culture, nothing of this magnitude could remain hidden for even a day.
The Decision Theory Fallacy
Some defenders of the “false flag” accusation attempt to give it a veneer of rationality by invoking Decision Theory - suggesting that Israeli leaders calculated that the loss of Israeli lives would be a worthwhile price to pay for a pretext to invade Gaza.
As someone who taught Decision Theory at Northwestern University, I can tell you that this is a gross misapplication of the concept. Decision models depend on assigning explicit costs or utilities to every possible outcome. Without those, the entire analysis is meaningless.
The “false flag” argument implicitly assumes that Israeli leaders assigned a trivially low cost to the loss of their own people. It imagines that they viewed hundreds of murdered civilians as a useful sacrifice. That assumption is grotesque - off by an unimaginable margin - and utterly inconsistent with Jewish and Israeli values, which sanctify human life and mourn every fallen soldier as family. It is one of the fundamental flaws that makes the false flag theory collapse under any rational inspection.
The Genocide Blood Libel
The companion accusation - that Israel is committing genocide - is equally false and morally repugnant. This blood libel spreads through edited videos, AI-generated scenes, and recycled images from other conflicts. Misleading footage, out-of-context remarks, and political infighting are weaponized to sustain a lie.
If Israel truly intended genocide, it could have pursued it far more “efficiently” - through indiscriminate aerial bombardment, with carpet bombing and unguided munitions, instead of risking its soldiers’ lives in a ground invasion. It would not spend enormous resources on precision weapons designed to limit collateral damage or issue advance warnings urging civilians to evacuate. No military seeking genocide behaves this way. These actions prove the opposite: an extraordinary, costly effort to minimize civilian casualties even while fighting a ruthless enemy embedded among them.
A Broader Pattern of Hatred
From medieval blood libels to modern “false flag” fantasies, the purpose remains the same: to invert morality - to portray Jews as the villains of their own tragedy. These accusations absolve the perpetrators of terror and blame the victims. They offer comfort to those who cannot confront the moral clarity of what happened: that Hamas committed atrocities with full intent, and that Israel, like any nation, responded in self-defense.
October 7 was not a false flag. It was a tragedy born of bias, blindness, and bureaucratic failure - not malice, deceit, or conspiracy. Israel does not need to invent atrocities; Hamas committed enough of them.
Conclusion: The Real Cost of the Lie
To accuse Israel of orchestrating its own slaughter is to commit a double crime - it desecrates the victims and it exonerates the murderers. It revives the oldest hatred, dressed in modern language.
The truth is painful but simple: Israel’s leaders failed to anticipate the scale of Hamas’s evil, not to manufacture it. They were misled by false confidence, not guided by deceit.
The blood libel of a “false flag genocide” reveals nothing about Israel - it reveals the moral decay of those who spread it. They are not uncovering truth; they are resurrecting an ancient lie, tailored for a digital audience that confuses cynicism with wisdom.