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| - By: Vanita Ganesh
October 15 2024
There is no evidence to suggest Halevi was killed in the October 13 Golani Brigade attack.
What is the claim?
An image of Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), has been shared online with the claim that he was killed in an attack on the Golani Brigade near Haifa, Israel. Several verified users on X (formerly Twitter), made the claim, with their posts receiving millions of views and thousands of reposts. Similar claims can be viewed here, here, and here.
Screenshots of the claims made online. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)
The claim surfaced a day after four Israeli soldiers were killed and 58 others were injured in an airstrike on an Israeli training camp in northern Israel, around 30 kilometers from Haifa, on October 13. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack, the BBC reported, adding that the IDF's Golani Brigade was the target. The Golani Brigade is based between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
However, the IDF chief of staff is still alive and was not among the soldiers killed.
What we found
We found no official announcements or credible reports that Halevi was killed in the strike. On October 14 the official IDF X account published an image of Halevi addressing IDF soldiers (archived here).
According to the post, Halevi made the following remarks from the Golani Brigade Training Base after the attack: "We are at war, and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult, and the results are painful. You operated well to treat and evacuate the wounded and injured. Embrace the bereaved families, accompany the wounded, and strengthen the commanders and soldiers."
The IDF X post from October 14 shows Halevi addressing soldiers after the Golani Brigade attack. (Source: IDF/X/Screenshot/Markup by Logically Facts)
A CNN report stated that on October 14, 2024, a day after the attack, Halevi visited the troops at the army base that was attacked and included an image of Halevi speaking to the soldiers. We found the image on the Getty Images website. The caption states the image was an IDF handout taken on October 14, 2024, in Israel, a day after the death rumors surfaced online.
An X post published by Israel War Room (archived here) on October 14 contains images and a video of Halevi speaking to soldiers at the base.
Screenshot of Israel War Room's X post. (Source: X)
Several local media outlets, such as The Times of Israel and Jerusalem Post, also covered Halevi's visit to the military base after the attack. The reports also identified the four IDF soldiers killed in the attack as Sargents Yosef Hieb, Omri Tamari, Yoav Agmon, and Amitay Alon. Halevi was not among them.
The verdict
There is no evidence IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi was killed in the October 13 Golani Brigade attack. He has since made an appearance at the Golani base that has been reported by multiple media outlets. Therefore we have marked this claim as false.
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