Since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, fake accounts posing as government agencies have been appearing en masse on all social media platforms. The aim of such accounts is to spread fake information. One such account was an account posing as Israel’s national intelligence service, Mossad.
At first glance, nothing is suspicious, and it appears to be a perfectly legitimate account on Platform X, formerly known as Twitter. It has the official Mossad logo, over 130,000 followers. It even has the blue Twitter tick used to signify a verified account, although it has become less valuable since CEO Elon Musk made it a paid account.
Most of the account’s posts contain information about the war between Israel and Hamas. It turned out that all these details fooled many social media users and even journalists into believing it was a legitimate account. A BBC fact-checking journalist discovered the account back on 15 October. It posted an excerpt from the video game Arma 3, mistakenly passed off as a real clip of the conflict. However, the account has since changed its name to Mossad Commentary and continues to post fake information.
The latest news on the account is that Yemen has declared war on Israel. The Yemeni government, however, has never done so. Last week, the Houthi rebels who control the country’s capital fired rockets at Israeli targets.
However, most of the world recognises the government of President Hadi, who operates in the Yemeni port city of Aden and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as the country’s legitimate leader. And while the missile and drone strikes are a significant escalation, the rebel group’s statement did not speak of all-out war, the Associated Press reported.
The same account included news that Hamas militants killed an infant by putting it in an oven. This unsubstantiated claim was refuted by Israeli fact-checking website Fake Reporter, but the fake news played a role: many people thought the report meant that Mossad had officially confirmed the baby’s death. The post has been viewed over 2.5 million times, it still hasn’t been deleted.
The only official Mossad X-account is called Mossad Career, which has been inactive since 2020. It has only 14,000 subscribers, is mainly dedicated to recruiting, and does not contain updates or commentary on current events.
