The finding should come as little surprise to the liberal Israeli publication. On November 9, Haaretz released an audio interview with Israeli reserve pilot Col. Nof Erez, who said the Netanyahu administration likely invoked the notorious Hannibal Directive, which dictates that Israelis taken captive should be killed by the military rather than left in the hands of Palestinian militants.

“Hannibal Directive was probably deployed because once you detect a hostage situation, this is Hannibal,” Erez told the outlet in a recording published November 9.

"What we saw here was a mass Hannibal,” the pilot concludes.

That sounds a little too unbelievable...

Apparently it was/is a real thing, but only applied to soldiers, not civilian hostages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive

Still terrible, and IDF still killed the people they were trying to save, but I highly doubt they were intentionally killing them.

The article doesn't differentiate between firing at perceived thread and hitting some party-goers and opening fire at the party-goers en mass, and them being killed only by IDF and not at all by Hamas. As much as I can easily believe IDF killed at least some this reeks of propaganda.

Archived version of the Haaretz article, Google translated from Hebrew to English

TheGrayZone.com according to Wikipedia:

The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018. It is known for its critical coverage of the US and its foreign policy, misleading reporting, and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes The Grayzone has downplayed or denied the Chinese government's human rights abuses against Uyghurs, published conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria, and other regions, and published pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone