The Palestinian Authority released a statement alleging that Israel killed its own civilians on October 7, accusing the IDF of using helicopters to gun down its own civilians at the Supernova music festival, where more than 350 people were killed. The claim comes on the heels of President Joe Biden advocating for a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip post-war, a proposal Israel has consistently opposed. Israel has highlighted the PA’s failure to denounce the October 7 attacks as a key reason for their rejection. The initial suggestion that an IDF helicopter involved in the festival near Re’im might have caused civilian casualties originated from an unnamed Israeli Police source in a Haaretz report. The claim was quickly amplified in the Arab press and on social media, often stripped of its original context. “Today, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah said something utterly preposterous. It denied that it was Hamas that carried out the horrible massacre at the nature festival near Gaza,” Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu responded said in a video statement released Sunday. “It actually accused Israel of carrying out that massacre. This is a complete reversal of truth.” Abbas, “who in the past has denied the existence of the Holocaust, today is denying the existence of the Hamas massacre and that’s unacceptable,” Netanyahu added. “My goal is that the day after we destroy Hamas, any future civil administration in Gaza does not deny the massacre, does not educate its children to become terrorists, does not pay for terrorists and does not tell its children that their ultimate goal in life is to see the destruction and dissolution of the State of Israel,” he said. “That’s not acceptable and that is not the way to achieve peace.” (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)