After Being Confronted By A MSNBC Presenter, An Israeli Advisor Has Admitted Israel Shared Disinformation
In the interview with Mehdi Hasan, Mark Regev, a senior advisor to Israel’s prime minister, also refused to admit that Israel had killed Palestinian children.
A senior advisor to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that the Israeli government has been sharing disinformation about its war against Hamas after being confronted by a journalist on live TV.
Mark Regev was interviewed by MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan on his show on Friday Nov. 17.
During the interview, Hasan asked Regev if he accepted the fact that the Israeli government had killed thousands of Palestinian children.
“I do not,” Regev replied “First of all, you don’t know how those people died, those children.”
“Oh wow,” Hasan replied.
Regev also suggested that the images of the dead children were “images that Hamas wants you to see.”
Hasan then said that he agreed that people should not blindly believe anything that Hamas says, but asked why people should believe what the Israeli government says either.
Hasan went on to cite two examples of the Israeli government providing false information.
The first involved the Israeli military spokesperson calling a calendar written in Arabic in the basement of a Gaza hospital a list of Hamas terrorist names.
This was swiftly debunked by people who could read Arabic, who pointed out the “terrorist names” were simply the days of the week.
The second involved a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by Ofir Gendelman, a spokesperson for Netanyahu.
In it, Gendelman posted a behind the scene clip from a Lebanese short film and claimed that it was Palestinians “faking their own injuries”.
“The Palestinians are fooling the international media and public opinion,” Gendelman wrote. “DON’T FALL FOR IT. See for yourselves how they fake injuries and evacuating “injured’ civilians, all in front of thr (sic) cameras. Pallywood gets busted again.”
It was debunked by X users, multiple media outlets, and even the film’s director.
“That is endless disinformation from your government, is it not?” Hasan asked.
Regev then tried to dodge the question by talking about how Israel had revised its death toll from Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack down from 1,400 to 1,200.
“We understood we had overestimated, we had made a mistake,” Regev said. “There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt, we thought they were ours. In the end, apparently they were Hamas terrorists.”
Regev then asked why it gave Hasan permission to use Hamas’ numbers.
Hasan pointed out that the numbers had been accepted on Friday by the United Nations, the human rights community and even the American intelligence community, before confronting Regev for dodging the question about the calendar.
Regev then said he had no comment because he can’t read Arabic and was not familiar with the incident.
Hasan then asked Regev about Gendelman’s tweet and why was still up on X, seven days later, despite it being false information.
“Is that not propaganda?” Hasan asked.
“I, I, uh, uh, once again, I understand that, that was also a mistake,” Regev said, before adding that he would speak to Gendelman about it “if [Hasan] would like”.
Gendelman’s post has since been removed.
