Israel’s pager plot in Lebanon has rekindled the debate over “booby-traps” and with it a popular blood libel—that the Jewish state not only rigs Hezbollah beepers but toys for tots and other civilian items.
This is a good opportunity to deconstruct one specific example, allowing readers a look at how these smears originate and travel into the bloodstream of public discourse.
On January 22, a Palestinian activist with nearly a million followers on X alone posted in Arabic a video that purportedly showed bombs that were made to look like cans of food. The idea was that Israel was booby-trapping tuna can-style containers to kill and maim hungry Palestinian children. The same day, the activist media hub MintPress News posted the video, claiming: “These particular canisters strongly resemble canned food and explode when opened.” Other popular disinformation accounts followed suit.
The next day, On January 23, the Times of Gaza—a verified news account on Twitter—posted a version of the video purporting to demonstrate the same claim: “Israeli jets dropped explosives disguised as cans of food to lure in displaced people facing starvation in southern Gaza.” Quds News Network, a popular Palestinian account, posted the video and added a claim: “Two children, one man, and one woman were killed by the fake cans.” EyeOnPalestine, another popular account, followed. So did a Lebanese diplomat. The Quds network video had millions of views. The lie went viral.
A few days later, France24 definitively debunked the absurd story. The network asked Hadj Boudani, a former French soldier and explosives expert, why “food cans” would have the words “Fuze (sic) mine” on them. Boudani explained that these cans were actually housing for a fuse that detonates anti-vehicle land mines.
What happens if you open the can? Nothing. It’s for storage. Can it be dangerous? Technically, the fuse is an igniter, but even the igniter requires far more pressure than a Palestinian child (or adult, for that matter) can use even if one tried to ignite the fuse. They are made to be triggered by tanks, after all.
Lastly, they could not be traced to the IDF, and evidence suggests they are more likely to have come from Jordan. Considering who might try to use antitank mines—the side that uses the tanks or the side trying to stop them—the original claim against Israel dissolves even further.
So, by the end of January, the blood libel is debunked. End of story, right? That would’ve been bad enough, because the wildfire spread of outrage at Israel can’t be undone by a French media fact check. But it turned out, the lie would get new life.
On May 13, Ryan Grim—the former DC bureau chief for the Huffington Post and for the Intercept, who has since launched a new media site called Drop Site News—posted a video of a Canadian nurse in Gaza talking about the awful condition of the strip’s medical facilities, who said: “I helped a young boy in the OR who was apparently opening a can tuna… and he lost one hand, part of another, and his legs needed to be amputated. This is not OK.”
That particular claim in the video got a lot of attention, as one might expect, despite the fact that it had already been debunked. Now, perhaps Grim felt it was not his responsibility to fact check the video, as he was just passing it along. But two days later, Grim proudly announced that on their show Counterpoints, Grim and co-host Emily Jashinsky decided to interview the nurse themselves.
The hosts made sure to bring the wide-ranging interview back to the specific claim of booby-trapped food cans—not to correct the story but to make sure it got more attention. (Grim asked her if it was a cluster bomb disguised as a tuna can, in case you’re wondering about the level of research that went into the interview.)
The nurse said she was indeed relaying the story as it was told to her regarding the boy she helped operate on. She continued: “You know, people are hungry. They find stuff they want to eat. So, you know, there’s potential that these things are getting placed in people’s houses when the IOF (sic) is, you know, raiding homes and stuff, and then unsuspecting people like children are finding them. And when you’re hungry, you can’t blame them.”
Responded Grim: “Wow, that is dark.”
Indeed it is. Grim, even.
And that’s how an insane blood libel became part of the regular rotation of claims about Israel that are raised by liars and dupes every time one sees an opportunity to advance a false moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies. And it’s how “Israeli booby-traps” became a category that included not just targeted and legal attacks on terrorists’ pagers but also (entirely invented) tuna-can cluster bombs.
