Conspiracy theorists on TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, and 4chan are saying the October 7th atrocities were committed by Israel against Israelis.
Despite copious evidence Hamas perpetrated atrocities against Israelis on October 7th, there is a growing movement in the United States that denies the massacre or blames it on Israel, The Washington Post Reports.
Although Hamas has admitted and even boasted about committing the massacre with its leaders threatening repeat attacks, and even though the terrorists filmed the crimes on their GoPro and smartphone cameras, a small but increasing number of Americans believe that Israel killed its own people and blamed Hamas as a pretext for committing genocide in Gaza.
In the three months since Hamas invaded Israel’s southern communities in a campaign of rape, torture, and murder that left 1,200 dead and 240 people captured, conspiracy theorists on TikTok, Reddit, Telegram, and 4chan are calling it a “false flag” operation committed by Israel against Israelis.
The Wall Street Journal profiled a holistic healer and self-proclaimed pacifist in South Carolina Mirela Monte who subscribed to a Telegram group called Uncensored Truths with 2,958 subscribers.
Monte became convinced by the group that October 7th was a false flag created by both Israel and the United States to justify genocide against Palestinians.
“It’s pure evil,” she said. “Israel is like a mad dog off a leash.”
The conspiracy theory has found its way to Pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and crowds have used the October 7th denial as a justification to rip down posters of hostages in Chicago and London.
Even at a city council meeting in Oakland, California, the issue was discussed and deliberated on with Christina Gutierrez who works for the city’s housing department, declaring, “Israel murdered their own people on October 7. Antisemitism isn’t real.”
The trend resembles the denial of the Holocaust, one of the most thoroughly documented crimes in history.
October 7th denial has similarities to the false belief that 9-11 was planned and carried out by the Israeli Mossad and the United States to justify going to war abroad.
There’s a built-in audience that wants to deny that Jews are the victims of atrocity and furthers the notion that Jews are secretly behind everything,” said Joel Finkelstein, chief science officer at NCRI (Network Contagion Research Institute).
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