Biden yet again says Hamas beheaded babies. Has new evidence emerged?

Shortly after Hamas militants attacked and killed civilians in Israel on Oct. 7, President Biden made a comment that the White House later walked back — that he had seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

Biden appeared to be echoing a statement made that same day by a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz. The next day, the Israeli government said it could not confirm the report made by Netanyahu’s office.

“There have been cases of Hamas militants carrying out beheadings and other ISIS-style atrocities. However, we cannot confirm if the victims were men or women, soldiers or civilians, adults or children,” an official told CNN. The White House also acknowledged that Biden had not seen any photos or received confirmation but that he was repeating what he had seen in the news.

The second time Biden made reference to it, while visiting Israel, his language was more careful. He did not necessarily say babies were beheaded, just that there were beheadings. There had been at least one report of an adult Thai worker being beheaded with a garden hoe. Yossi Landau, a commander with the first-responder organization ZAKA (a Hebrew acronym for “Disaster Victim Identification”), confirmed to The Fact Checker that he had seen the victim himself.

So it was striking when Biden recently revived the notion that Hamas “were cutting babies’ heads off.” To be clear, the militants killed civilians of all ages indiscriminately and in horrific ways, including tossing explosive devices into shelters and shooting unarmed people as they fled — acts that Human Rights Watch has labeled war crimes after verifying video evidence. Atrocities are not acts to rank in order of brutality. Still, the image of beheaded babies remains the most vivid in an attack that in turn led Israel to invade Gaza in a campaign that the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says has claimed the lives of more than 4,600 children. An exacting account of any such claims is warranted, but here we examine the facts regarding this particular taboo and especially gruesome act.
The Facts

In many conflicts, there are reports of atrocities against babies or children. As horrific as any such atrocities are, accounts can be exaggerated.

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