“I think that you can imagine what would happen in your own country if worshipers would be killed or wounded, either in churches or mosques or synagogues,” Netanyahu misleadingly told a gathering of foreign diplomats in occupied Jerusalem.

The Israeli media made virtually no mention of worshipers allegedly being attacked but criticized the military’s handling of the affair, saying the high number of Israeli deaths seemed to result from bad procedures and poor coordination by commanders on the scene.

Writing in the daily newspaper Maariv, political analyst Hemi Shalev said there was an “over-eagerness” in Israel’s Foreign Ministry “to release the account of a ‘massacre of innocent worshipers’ that never happened. An ambush against ‘IDF’ soldiers, as successful and painful as it might be, does not deserve the name ‘massacre,’ nor perhaps the name ‘terrorism.’”

Echoing Shalev’s analysis, Ha’aretz correspondent, Amos Harel said, “What happened in Hebron on Friday night was not a ‘massacre,’ as claimed by the spokespeople, nor was it an attack on ‘peaceful Jewish worshippers’ returning from prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The attack actually began several minutes after all of the worshippers had already returned safely to Kiryat Arba. Those killed Friday were killed in combat. All of the victims were armed fighters.”