Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada / August 29, 2024
The German ambassador in Tel Aviv has admitted that he spread fabricated Israeli atrocity propaganda intended to give credence to Israel’s debunked claims of mass rapes by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023.
“I regret having believed – like so many others – that that suicide letter was real. It turns out it was a fake,” Ambassador Steffen Seibert posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. “I find this an appalling act given that so many real lives were taken at the Nova festival, so many crimes committed, so many souls destroyed.”
Last week, Seibert shared a letter purporting to be from an Israeli who died by suicide because he was unable to live with the trauma he experienced at the Supernova rave on 7 October.
The fake letter was widely disseminated after it was shared by two notorious Israeli propagandists, Hen Mazzig, who translated it to English, and Aviva Klompas.
Mazzig had claimed that “After miraculously surviving the October 7 massacre, the young Israeli man decided to end his life after witnessing too many horrors, including the rape of a girl.”
“The overwhelming weight of everything he saw, heard and experienced, along with his inability to save the girl being assaulted nearby, made him feel incapable of continuing his life.”
Mazzig works for an Israeli propaganda outfit called the Tel Aviv Institute.
Klompas, a former Israeli government speechwriter, is the CEO of another lobby group called Boundless Israel.
Both have been very active in pushing Israel’s debunked claims of mass rapes on 7 October.
Hoax collapses
The suicide letter hoax appears to have been an attempt to lend new credence to an atrocity propaganda narrative that has completely fallen apart under scrutiny from independent media, including The Electronic Intifada.
This latest hoax collapsed when Israeli media tried to follow up and interview the family of the supposed suicide victim.
“A story that ran in recent days about a Nova survivor who saw horrors and committed suicide, did not leave a single dry eye,” Adam Shafir, the producer of Israeli Channel 13’s current affairs program Hatzinor (The Pipeline), posted on X on Thursday.
“After trying to reach the family, to tell their story, the search turned into an investigation,” Shafir added. “We will reveal tonight on The Pipeline that it is a complete fake.”
Caught red-handed, Mazzig was forced to issue a disingenuous apology.
Top German officials spread lies
Absent this high-profile debunking by Israeli media, there is little reason to believe the German ambassador would have acknowledged his role in spreading this instance of rape atrocity propaganda.
Seibert has repeatedly spread the mass rapes hoax, and has not retracted his support for that lie.
Seibert is a former presenter on the German state television channel ZDF. From 2010 to 2021, he served as the German government’s chief spokesperson.
Indeed, disseminating atrocity propaganda that aids and attempts to justify Israel’s German-armed genocide of Palestinians appears to be German government policy.
In May, Seibert’s boss, foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, lied at an event in Berlin that she had personally watched a film of a 7 October rape in progress filmed by a member of Hamas.
This was impossible, because Israeli government security agencies and a UN report have confirmed that among the thousands of photographs and videos made on 7 October, no video of a rape has been found.
When a journalist challenged the German government over Baerbock’s lie, a spokesperson smeared the reporter.
A few days later, Chancellor Olaf Scholz repeated the lie that Hamas fighters had filmed themselves raping Israeli women.
Over the last 11 months, countless Israeli lies have been thoroughly debunked – from beheaded and burned babies, a fetus torn out of a womb, and of course the lies about mass rapes on 7 October.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine (Haymarket Books)
