DEBUNKED: Israel Claims That Hamas Marked Children By Burning Their Legs With Motorcycle Exhaust
Uncaptured Media traces the origin of a viral lie that was spread by everyone from ex-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Ha’aretz.
On November 30, as the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions was coming to an end, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed on X that Hamas had burned child hostages’ legs with motorcycle exhaust. “We’re going to have to kill them,” he announced. The post was reposted more than four thousand times and had more than 1 million views.
We now know that Hamas terrorists who held hostage 13-year-old Yagel Yaacov and his brother Or, used a boiling hot motorcycle exhaust to “imprint” a burn on their legs as a way to identify them if they try to escape.
Let me repeat: They took a boiling piece of metal and pinned it to the legs of a helpless 13 year old captive child.
Hamas are sadistic monsters, and we’re going to have to kill them.
Asked for evidence by X user Eman Basher, Bennett replied, “The children and their scars.”
As this article will reveal, Bennett’s claim is a lie – the latest in a torrent of daily deceptions spun up to paint Hamas as a genocidal terrorist group that must be eliminated using the full force of Israel’s military, and to justify the mass murder of Palestinian civilians it is carrying out under the banner of achieving its stated goal of regime change in Gaza.
Planting the deception
Brothers Yagil and Or Yaacov, aged 13 and 16, were taken captive on October 7 from kibbutz Nir Oz.
Two weeks earlier, on November 14, as Israel and Hamas were nearing an agreement to release hostages, their uncle, Yaniv Yaacov, met with Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana, and on November 15, he met with Culture Minister Miki Zohar, both high-ranking members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, ostensibly to discuss their efforts to free his family members.
On November 27, the boys were released. Like nearly all other captives released, they exchanged friendly waves with Hamas militants as they sat in the Red Cross vehicles.
Israeli propagandist Yoseph Haddad published a deceptively edited video implying Or and Yagil were forced to wave to their former captors. However, Yagil’s gesture that supposedly shows contempt was done by someone sitting behind him.
‘Physically, they look perfectly fine’
On November 29, two days after the boys had been released, Yaacov and a group of Israeli hostages’ family members joined a meeting of Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, and his counterparts from the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Austria, Malta, Romania, a minister from Ireland and a deputy minister from Poland, at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in North Macedonia.
There, Yaacov planted the story Bennett referenced, claiming that his nephews, and all child hostages in Gaza, had been subjected to burns by motorcycle exhaust in order to mark them and that they had been drugged by their captors.
Uncaptured Media obtained video of the boys’ uncle presenting his claim, aired on Israel’s Channel 12.
“Two days ago, we got the kids back. The two kids were released and they told us stories about what they’ve been through inside Gaza. The stories are horrible… One example that shocked me was that each child that was taken by Hamas was taken on a motorbike, and they took every child, took his leg and put it on the exhaust of that motorbike, so that they have a burn, so they will be marked – if they run, if they escape – so they can find them. Now they are with us, they were drugged, they were treated so badly, but at least they are with us…”
Yet neither Yagil nor Or Yaacov have presented burns or scars, nor have they nor any other family member made any claim about being burned or drugged. Likewise, none of the released hostages nor their family members have made any similar claim, even after dozens of other children have been released from captivity. Not a single piece of evidence has emerged corroborating Yaacov’s claim, rendering it an obvious falsehood.
In fact, Yaacov directly contradicted his own testimony the night before. In an interview (archived) with Israel’s Channel 12, which the following day would air the OSCE meeting including his claims about his nephews and other children being burned and drugged, Yaacov described the joy of being reunited with his nephews and commented that, “Physically, they look perfectly fine.”
The Israeli foreign ministry was also quick to publicize Yaniv Yaacov's claim, publishing a news release (archive) about the meeting. The Hebrew version of the release originally included mention of his claims about his nephews having been marked with a burn, however, it was quietly scrubbed from the release without explanation. The foreign ministry’s publication of this dubious claim, on top of Yaacov’s meetings with top ministers weeks in advance, suggest he was groomed to plant an incendiary claim that would be taken at face value by credulous European diplomats.
No one bothered to examine the obvious logical fallacies. Why would Hamas only burn children to mark them rather than all hostages? Why would they burn the leg, which is covered by pants? How would a burn mark distinguish them from the tens of thousands of Palestinian children who have been burned, injured and severely maimed by Israel?
Israel media spread the lie, fail to cover their tracks
Despite a total lack of evidence, the nonsensical nature of the charge, and it having been removed from the Israeli foreign ministry’s release, Yaacov’s claims spread like wildfire as several Israeli media sites claim that the children were burned and drugged.
The claim was published by outlets across the entire spectrum of mainstream Israeli media, from left-liberal to religious Zionist, including Ha'aretz, Jerusalem Post (archived), Walla News (archived), Yedioth Ahronoth, Hamal (archived), Maariv (archived) Channel 1 (archived) and the Haredi site JDN News (archived). The Times of Israel published two articles on the uncle’s phony claim – one on November 30 (archived) and one on December 1 (archived). The New York Post also picked up the story (archived).
The religious Zionist website Behadrei Haredim published an article (archived) titled “The cruelty of Hamas: burned marks on the legs of the brothers” that compared the alleged marking of children with motorcycle exhaust to Nazi tattooing of Jewish concentration camp inmates.
This act of marking a limb on the body reminds us all of the numbers that the Nazis burned on the arms of the Jewish prisoners. Not only that, the uncle said that the brothers Or and Yagil were drugged and moved from place to place several times. He described barbarism that did not stop even when the children were already across the border, in the hands of Hamas, a sadism that takes us back to the darkest times in human history.
Some of these outlets, including Yedioth Ahronoth and Walla News, have since deleted their articles, however, they appear in Google search, which uses cached results.
The motorcycle exhaust story is just the latest in an endless string of atrocities stories the Israeli government has disseminated and media outlets have eagerly spread to manufacture consent for its genocidal campaign in Gaza. From the beheaded babies hoax to the babies strung on a clotheslines lie, they have fallen flat again and again. However, the point appears to overwhelm the public, both domestic and foreign, with the sheer quantity and repetition of lies, no matter how blatant.
Nonetheless, Yaniv Yaacov’s testimony will likely be added to a new database created by Israel for collecting evidence for Hamas atrocities against the Israeli captives. According to an article in state broadcaster Kann News, the database serves two purposes: “The prosecution of those who took part in the massacre and kidnapping”, and for the international legal arena, for which Israel collects “findings testifying to war crimes and Hamas' attitude to the abductees.”
As is often the case, the Israeli government’s lies contain an element of projection. Earlier this year, a much more evidence-based story broke out of Israeli police branding a Palestinian detainee’s face with a Star of David. In sharp contrast to the motorcycle exhaust burn story, this caused little uproar in Israel society.
That Yaniv Yaacov apparently partook in a deceptive state propaganda campaign also illustrates the agreement between the Israeli government and large swaths of the public in order to justify the mass-destruction of Gaza and the settlement enterprise.
With Israel committing daily atrocities on a larger scale than ever before, its deceptions are more frequent than ever before. However, they continue to lose their potency, further exposing Israel’s propaganda apparatus along the way.
lie like they breathe
rendering everything they say questionable AT BEST
Naphtali Bennett is a morbid fantasist who projects his own sick mind onto others. He is a criminal liar, a mass murderer, scum of the earth.