Israeli Journalist Retracts ‘Babies Hung on a Clothesline’ October 7 Atrocity Propaganda
Journalist Ishay Cohen published and erased a fake story provided to him by the Israeli military spokesperson, but a prominent Israeli propaganda account is still promoting it.
Israeli journalist Ishay Cohen thought he had a major scoop. As it turned out, he was credulously going along with the Israeli military’s latest propaganda stunt, and sacrificing his own credibility along the way.
Cohen, a journalist with Shabbat Square, a Hebrew-language news site directed at Israel’s Orthodox population, published a video he took of an Israeli military officer telling him that he saw a row of murdered “babies hung on a clothesline" in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack.
The interview was quickly downloaded and reposted by the account Mossad Commentary.
The incendiary claim sparked controversy, prompting Cohen to delete the story, however not until it had circulated for several hours, stirring a heated debate among Israeli X users.
Cohen explained his decision to publish the video, revealing that the Israeli military spokesperson’s office fed him the interview and was present during the filming, and that he deleted it to avoid damaging Israel’s propaganda efforts.
“I published an excerpt from an interview I had with an IDF officer. In the comments there were claims that his story was inaccurate. As I emphasized, the interview was offered to me by the IDF spokesperson, whose representative was also present in the filming. I deleted it due to the concern (even the slightest) that the officer's story might not be accurate and this would cause damage to the ‘hasbara’.”
Chani Burnshtein, a fellow Israeli, criticized Cohen’s decision to publish the video. “How do you upload such a video online without having 100% certainty? Why is everything here amateurish and crooked? irresponsible 😡” she wrote on X.
“Yesterday Yishai Cohen published a simply horrifying interview with an officer who described something shocking that does not quite match up with the data on the ground. In the end Yishai deleted it but in the meantime a popular account uploaded the video and within 8 hours hundreds of thousands were exposed to it. How do you upload such a video online without having 100% certainty? Why is everything here amateurish and crooked? irresponsible 😡”
Cohen defended his actions on Twitter, further exposing the Israeli military’s role in the aborted propaganda operation.
“As I emphasized yesterday. The interview was offered to me by the IDF spokesperson. I did not know the interviewee before. A representative of IDF spokesperson was present in all the filming and approved the broadcast (in other footage, when there were comments, they asked for their editing or avoiding their publication). After posting the promo, there were complaints, so I immediately deleted it within minutes. And yet, even this morning, the IDF spokesman refrained from claiming that this was a false story. By the way, the interviewee insists that the story is accurate and there was even another witness to this.
Amir Tibon, a journalist for the flagship liberal Israeli outlet Ha’aretz, criticized Cohen for publishing fake information provided by the Israeli military for damaging Israel’s credibility, and accused him of promoting a story to support Netanyahu’s political imperatives.
“Ishay, I appreciate you very much. But it should have been checked how many babies were murdered in that kibbutz before the broadcast. This is public information, not military. Regardless, this is a disgrace of the IDF spokesman, which causes damage to our credibility at the international level. And all because of a desire to flatter a “Bibist” movement that is being mobilized to support the Prime Minister.”
Cohen conceded that he should have fact-checked the story, credulously wondering why an Israeli military officer would fabricate a story about Hamas killing babies.
“I admit that I didn't think it was necessary to check the veracity of a story brought by a lieutenant colonel, an operations officer in the Gaza division, and also accompanied by a representative of the IDF spokesman. Why would an army officer make up such a horrific story? I was wrong.”
“Did you really write here that you didn’t think a journalist should verify information from the IDF spokesperson?” another user responded.
In another tweet, Cohen said that the military twice approached him for the interview, demonstrating their desire to get the fake story out, no matter the damage to his journalistic reputation.
Israeli army spokesperson
The Israeli military officer who appeared in the video is Yaron Buskila, a Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves and decorated former special forces commander. During his military career, Buskila worked in the IDF Spokesman Unit – which arranged and oversaw his fake testimony with Cohen – where he interfaced with top military and diplomatic personnel, and lectured on “command and combat dilemmas.”
Buskila is the Secretary General of Israel Defense And Security Forum, a right-wing think tank full of Israeli military and intelligence officials, and tied to the U.S. government.
Buskila has posted photos of himself lecturing to American officers.
Among IDSF’s fellow staff are Eliyau Yosian, a former Israeli intelligence officer who recently pronounced that there are no civilians in Gaza, and Omer Dostri, who, as I reported, authored a paper on behalf of the United States Department of Defense calling for ethnic cleansing and settlements in Gaza, and a war against Hezbollah that would collapse Lebanon.
Prior to October 7, Buskila described himself as a “special operations officer” without mentioning any division, implying a high rank in the Israeli military. Since then, he has called himself an “acting operations officer in the Gaza division” – implying a direct role in military operations in Gaza. However, no evidence has appeared of his involvement in the war on Gaza, suggesting he has been deployed as a pundit posing as an officer on the frontlines.
When I contacted Buskila to get this version of events, he insisted that I obtain permission to interview him from the Israeli military spokesperson, confirming that he was working on behalf of the Israeli military. When I asked him why Ishay Cohen retracted his video, he said that Cohen mistakenly believed that the babies were hung in the kibbutz of Kfar Aza.
“I didn’t say that it happened in Kfar Aza, I just gave the interview in Kfar Aza.” Buskila then claimed that Cohen confirmed the story with the Israeli military spokesperson later on November 29, however, the journalist has not made any public statement indicating so.
Contradictory lies and recycled propaganda
Cohen was not the first to promote Buskila’s phony story about babies on a clothesline.
On October 13, The Epoch Times, a propaganda outlet funded by CIA-cutout National Endowment for Democracy and the Chinese Falun Gong cult, published an atrocity propaganda story quoting Buskila. That time, however, he claimed to have heard about babies hung on a clothesline from an anonymous rabbi that he apparently invented.
Retired Lt. Col. Yaron Buskila, an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) veteran-turned-military commentator and contributor to Epoch Israel, said he talked to a rabbi who went into the kibbutzim with IDF troops to give the victims proper Jewish burial. He now regrets having that conversation.
"I regret that I even met the rabbi," said Mr. Buskila, who has seen combat during his service. "His descriptions of things he saw were so shocking to hear that I just threw up."
In addition to children and adults being decapitated, according to Mr. Buskila, the rabbi saw "babies that were hanged in a row" with their mothers' bras.
That testimony contradicts the allegations presented in his interview with Cohen, in which he claimed to have seen the hanging babies with his own eyes.
The same article contains a similar testimony given by Mendy Haviv, a commander of non-governmental rescue and recovery organization ZAKA:
"At the end of the kibbutz, in a house that was completely destroyed, they [the babies] are sitting on a fence outside of the house," Mr. Haviv recalled. "Their bodies are burned. Their parents, sitting in front of them, are slaughtered."
Haviv then provides an explanation for the complete lack of visual evidence:
The search and recovery commander said he was not allowed to take photos of the victims. But for the purpose of identification, he only took pictures of unique marks like tattoos and earrings.
The only visual evidence of killing shown in the article is a photo of the body of an Israeli soldier lying on the grass covered by white plastic.
Buskila’s and Haviv’s testimonies are a redux of the infamous 40 beheaded babies story, repeated by media stenographers and political figures including U.S. President Joe Biden, despite it being debunked as a baseless, evidence-free claim that was retracted by the White House. According to information published by the mainstream Israeli news sites Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz, one baby under two years old was murdered during the Hamas attack, one victim was two years old, four victims were five years old, and the rest were eight years or older.
While Cohen has deleted his post, the Mossad Commentary post remains live at the time of this article’s publication.
With Netanyahu’s pledge to defeat Hamas faltering amid pressure to make the current ceasefire final, the Israeli propaganda machine is floundering too.
So many things which haven’t been verified or were even retracted just keep floating around. It is possible that some thought the crucial thing is to shape the narrative--create enormous shock value and don’t worry about the actual details. This seems to have backfired in a truly horrible way, in which all the credibility has been brought into question. Things that are verified by all the best evidence one can have such as multiple eyewitnesses and film are now doubted. I can’t figure out who would think it is a good idea to keep doing this given the results. A lot of bad things happened that there is no doubt about so why are you throwing other, doubtful things.
In addition, there’s sometimes a reluctance to provide evidence. Claiming terrible events occurred that you claim you don’t have to verify while also asserting disprovable falsehoods in a situation where you want people to understand the seriousness of is such a bad idea I was wondering if it was an intentional propaganda tactic that we are unfamiliar with--like ‘destroy your own credibility and then if people doubt you they can be accused of being unfair’ or ‘create tremendous confusion about evidence so that people will start to doubt whatever they learn.’ But I don’t think it is! So what ARE they doing? And why?
I reported post on X. If they reject my report, I will get the chance to detail what the issue is