No, this Israeli minister didn't say that he underestimated Iran's missile capabilities
"Why did you provoke Iran?' Omer Bar-Lev, former public security minister and member of the left-leaning Israeli Labor Party, supposedly said during a confrontation with the current national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is a member of the far right.
"We didn't realise the power of Iran's missile capabilities,' Ben Gvir supposedly responded.
Social media users have been circulating a video apparently showing this conversation, which took place in Hebrew, along with a translation in English. The posts claim that the men were discussing the recent air strikes between Israel and Iran.
The video was published on June 17 by an account called Silenced Sirs, which is known to share both conspiracy theories and content criticising Israel. The video has since garnered more than three million views on X. However, the video was taken out of context – and the translation into English is incorrect.
A video from 2022
We ran the video through a reverse image search (see our easy guide to find out how to do one yourself). We discovered by doing this that the same video was published online back in March 2022 on the X account of the Israeli TV channel, Kan – a full three years before the current conflict between Israel and Iran broke out. The video actually shows a confrontation between the two men that took place on March 27, 2022, in the Israeli city of Hadera after a deadly attack took place there.
That day, two men with links to the Islamic State group opened fire on Israeli police officers, killing two officers and injuring a number of civilians.
The media outlet The Times of Israel reported on the confrontation between the two men at the time, confirming that the confrontation between Ben Gvir, a deputy at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and then security minister Bar-Lev, was about the terrorist attack that had taken place and not about recent strikes on Iran.
'Stop it! You should be ashamed! You're the worst minister … They took the most leftist person they could find and made him public security minister!' Ben Gvir shouted at Bar-Lev.
'No, I'm not ashamed, ' Bar-Lev responded. 'You should be ashamed! You're nothing!'
The article reports that 'the verbal conflict escalated, with security forced to physically separate the two politicians".
Since the start of the recent escalation between Israel and Iran, there have been a number of disinformation campaigns where videos and photos taken out of context have been widely shared –
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