Qassam operatives in the Gaza Strip during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation (social media)
An Israeli journalist named Ishai Cohen has deleted an interview he had published that included allegations that Palestinian militants killed children during the attack launched by the Palestinian resistance on Israeli settlements in the Gaza envelope on October 7.
Cohen said in posts published Wednesday on his X account that the person who made statements that included those allegations, during an interview with him, was a conscript in the Israeli army.
"The IDF spokesperson offered me the interview, and I had no previous knowledge of the person I interviewed," the Israeli journalist said.
"A representative of the IDF Spokesperson's Office was present during filming, agreed to broadcast, and in other footage, when there were comments, they asked to edit or avoid them, without further details."
The Israeli journalist noted that he had to delete the interview after criticism of its lack of credibility, but clarified that the IDF spokesman has not yet come out to deny the allegations.
Israeli journalist's tweet and Israeli blogger's response to it
Hundreds of thousands watched the interview
Cohen deleted the video after it was picked up by other accounts, according to an Israeli blogger named Shani, who explained in posts on her X account that the video clip containing the interview was uploaded before it was deleted by a popular account, and within 8 hours hundreds of thousands watched it.
"Yesterday, Yishai Cohen published a terrifying interview with an officer who described something shocking, which does not exactly match the facts on the ground," the Israeli activist said.
"How can you upload such a video online without being 100% verified?" she wondered with astonishment. This is irresponsible."
Journalists and pro-Israel accounts promoted false news shortly after the Al-Aqsa flood operation, where an Israeli journalist named Nicole Zedik, who works for the Israeli channel "i24", claimed during live coverage from Kibbutz Kfar Azza near the border with the Gaza Strip, that the Palestinian resistance beheaded 40 children in the place, and accounts close to Israel and other right-wing American quickly received the misinformation despite the absence of any official Israeli confirmation.
Reporter Ishai Cohen says that it was the Israeli army spokesman who offered him a television interview with the recruit who claimed to have seen the killing of children in the settlements around Gaza
, adding: Although I deleted the clip shortly after it was published because of criticism of its credibility, the army spokesman has not come out to deny the allegations so far https://t.co/dAop6ofDhs pic.twitter.com/U1rcwQF8mV
— Essam (@DrEsamBaraka) November 30, 2023
The information caused a huge digital uproar worldwide, especially in the Western world, and was reinforced by US President Joe Biden's claim that he saw pictures of Israeli children slaughtered by Hamas, but the White House later denied Biden saw the images himself, stressing that he only heard about them from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
An investigation by the independent American website The Grey Zone revealed that the allegation that members of the resistance beheaded Israeli children originated from an Israeli soldier named David Ben-Zion, and he was identified during an interview with the Israeli "i24" as an "extremist settler leader."
The investigation pointed to the retraction of media outlets and journalists from initial reports in this regard after the allegation of beheading of children could not be substantiated, including the British newspaper The Independent and the American channel "CNN", and the White House, which retracted the statement made by Biden when he claimed to have seen images of "terrorists" beheading children in Israel.
Source : Al Jazeera + Anatolia