Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah have been exchanging fire amid a widening conflict in the Middle East. However, claims on social media that the chief of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was killed in an October 13, 2024 attack on a military base are false; Herzi Halevi visited the base after the drone strike.
“BREAKING Initial reports confirm the assassination of Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi,” says an October 13, 2024 X post from Anastasia Maria Loupis, a Danish physician who has previously shared misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war.
The post, which accumulated almost 100,000 likes, came soon after Hezbollah took credit for a drone strike that reportedly killed four soldiers at an Israeli military training camp near the northern city of Haifa.
The same claim circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, and Rumble — including in Spanish, French, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Indonesian and Korean. Pakistan’s GTV News also reported the unconfirmed online rumors.
Hezbollah’s attack on the Israeli base near the town of Binyamina was the deadliest such assault since Israel stepped up its offensive against the Iran-backed group in late September 2024.
Israel says it wants to push back Hezbollah to secure its northern boundary and allow tens of thousands of people displaced by rocket fire since last year to return home safely.
Hezbollah says its strikes are in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. The International Organization for Migration has verified 690,000 displaced people in Lebanon.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures. The number includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed 42,289 people, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The United Nations has described the figures as reliable.
Despite posts claiming he died, Halevi traveled to visit the Binyamina training base, which was housing members of Israel’s Golani brigade, on October 14 — hours after the Hezbollah drone strike.
“We are at war, and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult and the results are painful,” he told soldiers during the visit.
Footage and images taken by the IDF show Halevi walking around the site with other members of the country’s military (archived here and here).
The IDF also posted a statement on X confirming the number of soldiers killed in the attack and asking internet users to stop speculating about their names (archived here).
AFP has debunked other claims about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.
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