A Beaverton city councilor who posted to Instagram that there were “different versions” of what happened when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 said Wednesday she was trying to make a point about misinformation, not deny the attack.
Beaverton City Councilor Nadia Hasan didn’t respond to attempts by the Capital Chronicle to reach her about the post before an initial article. Late Tuesday afternoon, a day after the article was published and after criticism from Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle and others, Hasan emailed to say that she thought it misrepresented her values and views.
“I am well aware of the attacks by Hamas where over 1,000 people were murdered and over 200 people were kidnapped and have condemned them publicly,” Hasan wrote.
She said she was calling for the return of all hostages and an end to violence so all people in the region can live in peace and govern themselves.
Hasan answered some additional questions Wednesday morning but declined to explain what she meant by “different versions of what happened” on Oct. 7. Those comments sparked criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Oregon, including Hoyle, who tweeted about the briefings she’s received as a member of Congress.
“I’ve had briefings & assure you the Hamas attacks on 10/7 & the torture & murder that the attackers recorded themselves are real & more brutal and heinous than I can ever describe,” Hoyle tweeted “There should be no questioning of Hamas’s evil as we work for peace (between) Israelis and Palestinians.”
The post Hasan initially shared from political activist Saira Rao included a selectively cropped screenshot of an Oct. 13 article from the Times of London recounting the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on the Kfar Aza kibbutz. Rao selected two paragraphs from a survivor sharing her theory that the militants who broke into her safe room spared her because they were looking for soldiers, but the screenshot cut off before a second quote from the survivor describing how her friends and their children were “butchered.”
The Instagram slideshow Rao posted ended with a slide claiming Hamas killed only Israeli soldiers, and that the civilians murdered on Oct. 7 were killed by the Israel Defense Forces.
Hasan shared the slide with a screenshot from the Times of London article, adding “I’m very hesitant to share/amplify things without fact checking but I still feel like there’s different versions of what happened on 10/7 and if that’s true, there needs to be an immediate deescalation to find out what happened and decide a course of action. When kids in high school fight, we take the time to investigate, deescalate and understand the truth before letting things get extra. With the death of 10,000 plus (people), we should really have a clear understanding of what happened.”
She told the Capital Chronicle by email on Wednesday that she read the entire article and looked at Rao’s slideshow before posting.
“While there is reporting by multiple sources that the IDF accidentally shot some music festival goers, Hamas’s heinous murder of civilians is not in dispute,” Hasan wrote.
She didn’t explain what she thought were the “different versions” of what happened on Oct. 7, saying instead that there is “an overwhelming amount of misinformation and disinformation circulating in the media related to this horrible war and my plea continues to be to lead with humanity.”
Hasan also said she previously publicly acknowledged the Oct. 7 attack on her social media account. No such posts are currently on her public Instagram or Twitter pages, which both contain posts referring to the ongoing conflict as a “genocide.” But she shared a screenshot of an Oct. 20 Instagram story post, a selfie with a caption referring to attending Friday prayer at the mosque.
“Today I talked to a friend who knows someone who is Israeli who is missing,” the caption continued. “My heart went out to them and we talked about it. I checked in with some Jewish friends. I checked in on some Muslim friends. Humanity is not complicated.”
Oregon Capital Chronicle
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