The Washington Post published a disturbing report on Sunday about the growing phenomenon of October 7th denial, with groups and forums on online media, such as TikTok, Reddit and 4chan, linking Israel to “false flag” – a staged event that casts blame on another party.

Although the October 7th assault was the most well-documented in history, with the Hamas terrorists themselves shamelessly recording their unspeakable acts of torture, violence, and murder, false flag narratives denying the attacks tripled on social media in the weeks following the attack.

A small but growing group denies the basic facts of the attacks, pushing a spectrum of falsehoods and misleading narratives that minimize the violence or dispute its origins. Some argue the ambush was staged by the Israeli military to justify an invasion of Gaza. Others say that some 240 hostages Hamas took into Gaza were actually kidnapped by Israel. Some contend the United States is behind the plot.

When she first heard about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Mirela Monte was “appalled.” The South Carolina real estate agent and self-described holistic healer detests violence and is horrified by war and human suffering.

But as Monte read more in Uncensored Truths, a Telegram group with 2,958 subscribers active on foreign policy and the supposed perils of vaccination, her shock turned to anger. According to the forum, the news reports were wrong: Secretly, Israel was behind the massacre.

Monte now argues the Oct. 7 attack was a “false flag” staged by the Israelis — likely with help from the Americans — to justify genocide in Gaza. “Pure evil,” she said. “Israel is like a mad dog off a leash.”

According to the report, denial of the attacks “is bleeding into the real world: Demonstrators have shouted the claim at anti-Israel protests and have used it to justify removing posters of hostages in cities like London and Chicago. At a November city council meeting in Oakland, Calif., multiple residents disputed the veracity of the attack.

“Israel murdered their own people on October 7,” said Christina Gutierrez, an analyst in the city’s housing department, where some in the crowd shouted “antisemitism isn’t real.” Gutierrez did not respond to requests for comment.

“So basically the Hamas attack was a false flag for Israel to occupy Gaza and kill Palestinians,” reads a recent post on the Reddit forum r/LateStageCapitalism. “Expected behaviour from nazi wannabes.”

The phenomenon is worrisome to Jewish leaders and researchers who see ties to Holocaust denial, the attempt to undermine the genocide that killed 6 million Jews during World War II, a belief that has surged online. They also see parallels to many pernicious, internet-driven conspiracy theories with antisemitic tentacles, including the QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleges “globalists” — a reference, some say, to Jews — used the pandemic to control the world, and disinformation about the 9/11 terrorist attack, which some fringe groups falsely argue was perpetrated by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

“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.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)