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AMERICAN MEDIA KEEP CITING ZAKA — THOUGH ITS OCTOBER 7 ATROCITY
STORIES ARE DISCREDITED IN ISRAEL  
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Arun Gupta
February 27, 2024
The Intercept
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_ “The entire state of Israel was engaged in framing the narrative
that Hamas is equal to ISIS.” _

Volunteers of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox organization Zaka collect
samples in one of the houses attacked by Palestinian militants on
October 7, in Kibbutz Holit in Israel’s southern district south of
the Gaza Strip on Oct. 26, 2023., (photo: Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty
Images)

 

YOSSI LANDAU IS the head of operations for the southern region at
Zaka, an Israeli search-and-rescue organization. Assigned to collect
human remains after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, Landau and
his fellow Zaka members riveted media outlets worldwide with the
horrific atrocities they saw.

Speaking through tears at the Jerusalem Press Club shortly after the
attack, Landau described
[[link removed]] finding a
pregnant woman in Kibbutz Be’eri in a “big puddle of blood, face
down.”

“Her stomach was butchered open,” Landau said. “The baby that
was connected to the cord was stabbed.”

In Be’eri, he said, he also found a family who was tied up,
tortured, and executed with a bullet to the back of the head: father,
mother, and two small children around 6 or 7 years old. An eye was
missing, fingers chopped off. Landau later told
[[link removed]] CNN,
“The terrorists were having a ball,” with Palestinian militants
devouring a holiday meal set out by the family. Landau broke down
recounting the tale, as a CNN reporter comforted him.

Long after Landau’s emotional recollections were replayed, repeated,
cited, and quoted in the global media, a problem emerged: No one could
find any evidence that the two massacres ever took place — in
Be’eri or elsewhere.

In the case of the butchered mother and fetus, the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz concluded
[[link removed]] the
killing “simply didn’t happen.” As for the tortured family, no
one killed in Be’eri matches Landau’s account. The one brother
and sister [[link removed]] to
die in the kibbutz were 12-year-old twins, killed when an Israeli
general
[[link removed]] ordered
a tank to fire 
[[link removed]]on
a house where Hamas militants were holding them hostage. Nevertheless,
Landau told these stories unchecked in interviews and press
[[link removed]] conferences
[[link removed]].

Landau spread his tales far and wide with little pushback — telling
similar stories on camera to CNN, Fox News
[[link removed]], and the
Media Line [[link removed]], and
at an outdoor press conference. Even after reporters showed his
accounts lacked any substantiation, news organizations continued to
let him off the hook. The New York Times
[[link removed]] recently
interviewed Landau as part of a profile about Zaka, but it did not
mention either of his atrocity stories.

Western Media Whitewash

Zaka stories have been essential to justifying Israel’s all-out war
against Gaza, which has killed around 30,000 Palestinians in less than
five months. Speaking at the United Nations in December, Zaka deputy
commander
[[link removed]] Simcha
Greiniman broke down
[[link removed]] while describing alleged
atrocities. He later told the same stories to a meeting
[[link removed]] of
British parliamentarians.

Given its prominence, Zaka has been scrutinized by the Israeli press
but not the U.S. media. A blockbuster Haaretz report
[[link removed]] found
after October 7, senior military leaders sidelined Israel Defense
Forces soldiers specializing in recovering bodies and preserving
evidence and sent in untrained Zaka volunteers instead. Zaka
reportedly turned massacre sites into a “war room for donations,”
used corpses as fundraising props, “spread accounts of atrocities
that never happened,” and botched forensics that are central to
Israel’s claim
[[link removed]] that Hamas
carried out a premeditated
[[link removed]] campaign
[[link removed]] of mass
rap
[[link removed]]e.

Even when Western media outlets have questioned Landau, the inquiries
were half-hearted. The Times asked Landau “about reports, attributed
to him, that children had been beheaded on Oct. 7.” It reported
[[link removed]]:
“Mr. Landau denied making the claim, though he acknowledged
sometimes misspeaking in the immediate aftermath of the attack. What
he saw himself, he said, was a small, burned body with at least part
of the head missing, perhaps severed by the force of a blast. It was
unclear, he added, if it was the body of teenager or someone
younger.”

While the Times said the statements had been “attributed” to
Landau, there is no dispute he said them. He told the stories on
camera, and the clips were posted widely online. He told CNN he found
“a body, of a 14, 15-year-old. Head chopped off. We were looking
around for the head. Couldn’t find it.” On India’s Republic TV
[[link removed]], Landau said of
beheaded children, “Yes, this occurred. This happened.” He made
similar comments to Channel 14 Israel
[[link removed]] and CBS
News
[[link removed]].
There is no evidence 
[[link removed]]Hamas
beheaded children or babies. As The Intercept reported at the time,
the Israeli military said it couldn’t confirm
[[link removed]] the
claims just four days after the attack.

The Times report on Zaka reads like a glowing portrait of selfless
volunteers on a “holy mission” to honor the dead and give families
closure in accordance with Jewish law. The article could also be read
as a whitewash of an organization mired in sexual abuse and financial
scandals for decades. The Times never notes that Landau appears to be
a serial fabulist, and other Zaka volunteers tell stories that stretch
credulity.

Landau has talked openly
[[link removed]] on four
[[link removed]] occasions
of inventing 
[[link removed]]stories: “When
we go into a house, and we’re using our imagination
[[link removed]]. The bodies is
telling us the stories that happened to them.” Another Zaka official
said in an Israeli Foreign Ministry video
[[link removed]], “The walls, the
stone shouted: ‘I was raped.’”

“Fictional”

Zaka volunteers have become ubiquitous in media reports about the
attacks of October 7. They have been quoted by Reuters
[[link removed]], CNN
[[link removed]], New
[[link removed]?] York
[[link removed]] Times
[[link removed]], BBC
[[link removed]], The Guardian
[[link removed]], NBC
News
[[link removed]], Politico
[[link removed]], Wall
Street Journal
[[link removed]], Washington
Post
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and many other outlets — with few, if any, mentions of past scandals
or present controversies.

These outlets fail to scrutinize Zaka stories. Many volunteers
describe extreme crimes that would leave extensive evidence yet
aren’t corroborated by reporting. Greiniman, Zaka’s deputy
commander, claimed
[[link removed]] naked women were
tied to trees at the Supernova music festival. He said
[[link removed]] he found a
toddler with a knife stuck through his head and that he discovered
foreign fighters — they had left their IDs in their pockets. A Zaka
spokesperson said he saw dozens
[[link removed]] of
dead babies, and children
[[link removed]] bound together and
burned. Another volunteer claimed
[[link removed]] they found a
sexually mutilated woman’s corpse under rubble with her organs
removed.

Media
[[link removed]] outlets
[[link removed]],
including Israeli television news programs
[[link removed]],
have debunked
[[link removed]] numerous
stories about dead babies, calling them “fictional.”

No one else has corroborated Greiniman’s story of foreign fighters.
Months later, another source did claim to find five dead women tied
naked to trees: According to a new report
[[link removed]] from
an Israeli group, a farmer who rescued attendees from the music
festival alleged the five women’s organs were all slashed and made
bizarre claims about sexual mutilation. In three previous
[[link removed]] interviews
[[link removed]],
the farmer never
[[link removed]] made
such claims nor is there any forensic or photo evidence to back up his
account.

Instead of offering verifiable evidence of war crimes, Zaka volunteers
serve another purpose: They are an invaluable part of Israel’s
propaganda machine. Israeli government officials, in pushing for a
total war on Palestinians, portray Hamas as another Islamic State, the
Iraq- and Syria-based terror group that shocked the world by making
women sexual slaves and posting a spate of execution videos beginning
around 2014.

In an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet
[[link removed]], Eitan
Schwartz, a volunteer consultant in the prime minister’s
[[link removed]] National
Information Directorate, a public diplomacy office, explained how Zaka
volunteers influenced news coverage.

“The testimonies of Zaka volunteers, as first responders on the
ground, had a decisive impact in exposing the atrocities in the South
to the foreign journalists covering the war,” Schwartz said. “The
entire state of Israel was engaged in framing the narrative that Hamas
is equal to ISIS and in deepening the legitimacy of the state to act
with great force.”

“The first-hand testimonies of the organization’s amazing men of
grace, who were exposed to the most difficult sights, had a tremendous
impact on the reporters,” he went on. “These testimonies of Zaka
people caused a horror and revealed to the reporters what kind of
human-monsters we are talking about.”

In the same Ynet article, Nitzan Chen, director of the government
press office, said, “It’s hard for me to imagine Israeli hasbara
advocacy vis-a-vis the foreign press without the amazing, effective
activity of Zaka people.” (Hasbara is usually translated as
explanation or diplomacy, but in practice
[[link removed]] it’s
sophisticated information warfare to mold
[[link removed]] public
opinion to serve Israel’s strategic ends.)

Western media lapped up Zaka stories. An Israeli government video of
Landau telling his tortured family story is emblazoned with “HAMAS =
ISIS [[link removed]].”

The political response after October 7 played out like a coordinated
campaign. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the way,
proclaiming “Hamas is ISIS
[[link removed]]” on October 9.
Netanyahu’s rival and ruling partner Benny Gantz
[[link removed]] rallied
behind the slogan
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as did Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
[[link removed]] and
other Israeli officials. Within days, top American officials lined up
too. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
[[link removed]] and
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin
[[link removed]] both echoed
the sentiment. Even President Joe Biden
[[link removed].] said,
“The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind
the worst rampages of ISIS.”

Fundraising on the Scene

Israeli news outlets — in particular Haaretz’s investigation into
Zaka — have called into question credulous media reports repeating
[[link removed]] Israeli
claims
[[link removed]] that religious
concerns
[[link removed]] and
chaos prevented
[[link removed]] gathering of
forensic evidence in the aftermath of the attack.

After Zaka personnel and soldiers from the IDF’s Military Rabbinate
were deployed to recover remains, much of the collection was bungled,
according to Haaretz. When soldiers trained in recovery were finally
let in the second week after the attack, they were alarmed by Zaka’s
actions.

An ultra-Orthodox organization made up of male volunteers, the
precursor to Zaka, was founded by Yehuda Meshi-Zahav in 1989, formally
becoming Zaka in 1995. The group relies on donations and government
tenders for its budget, and after October 7 it made the most of both,
according to Haaretz. The Israeli newspaper published a photo of Zaka
members carrying out fundraising activities near a dead body; sources
from other rescue groups observed Zaka volunteers make fundraising
calls and videos with corpses in the background. The second week after
the attacks, the Defense Ministry began paying Zaka for its work on
the ground.

All available evidence suggests Zaka needed a cash infusion. The group
was nearly insolvent on October 7. According to a 2022 Haaretz
investigation, Zaka netted millions of dollars in public funds over
the last five years by claiming
[[link removed]] more
than three times the number of volunteers than it had, a timespan that
includes the tenure of the current CEO, Duby Weissenstern, who was
featured in the New York Times profile. Even as Zaka was under threat
of bankruptcy in 2021, according to the Times of Israel, it used
“shadow organizations
[[link removed]]”
to divert
[[link removed]] millions
of dollars to Meshi-Zahav and his family, allegedly spending it on
groceries, plane tickets, luxury hotels, “and a multi-million dollar
villa.” Zaka’s schemes, reported the Israeli news site NRG,
included hitting up donors for money to buy the same motorcycle and
changing a plaque to reflect the new donor’s name.

Under Meshi-Zahav, the organization was beset by financial and abuse
scandals. Despite knowing
[[link removed]] of
“at least 20 cases” where Meshi-Zahav allegedly sexually assaulted
minors, police
[[link removed]] failed
to investigate him and closed the case without charging him in
2014. More than a dozen
[[link removed]] people
came forward in 2021 claiming
[[link removed]] Meshi-Zahav
raped, assaulted, and threatened them. “He allegedly exploited his
status, power, money and even the organization he heads [Zaka] to
assault teenagers and … boys and girls” as young as 5 years
old, Haaretz
[[link removed]] reported.
The abuse was a family affair: One brother was imprisoned
[[link removed]] for
raping a female relative and a second fled abroad after being
investigated, along with Yehuda, for lavishing gifts on seven teenaged
girls in distress and then sexually abusing
[[link removed]] them,
sometimes in Zaka vehicles.

One teenaged victim said Meshi-Zahav effectively turned him into a
“prostitute” and rewarded the teen with “a Zaka beeper” and a
coveted certificate of volunteer work. A young woman alleged that
after being raped by Meshi-Zahav, he threatened: “If you say
anything to anyone, a Zaka van will run you over.” Police suspected
that top Zaka officials and figures in the ultra-Orthodox community
knew of the abuse but helped silence the criticisms. Meshi-Zahav
attempted suicide shortly after the abuse allegations were reported
and died a year later.

No mention of this history made it into the Times profile, or that of
any other U.S. media outlet that has featured Zaka volunteers.
Meanwhile, the positive reports have been a boon to Zaka’s image and
bankroll.

Zaka fundraises on Facebook and buys Google ads for donations. Days
after October 7, with specialized fundraising
[[link removed]] efforts popping
up
[[link removed]],
money began flowing to different Zaka outfits. The group was showered
[[link removed]] with
some of the $242 million disbursed by the Jewish Federation of North
America. It shared
[[link removed]] in a $15
million donation from chip-making giant Nvidia. Billionaire Roman
Abramovich pledged $2.2 million
[[link removed]] to
Zaka. At a November 19 “Unity Concert for Israel” in Manhattan,
with Yossi Landau
[[link removed]] on
stage, a sign displayed
[[link removed]] $1,000,430 raised
for Zaka. The Zakaworld website has a campaign
[[link removed]] that
has topped $3.5 million, and apparently a separate post-October 7
fundraiser totaled
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$2.1 million. Haaretz calculated that Zaka has raked in at least $13.7
million since the attacks.

Zaka volunteers seemed less intent on bagging bodies than grabbing
money. According to Haaretz, Zaka failed to document remains, put
parts from different bodies in the same bag, and did not collect all
the remains in homes and the field. Zaka volunteers apparently did
find time to rewrap already bagged remains in material that
“prominently displayed the Zaka logo.”

“Not Pathology Experts”

The New York Times’s Zaka profile came after the paper’s
controversial December 28 article titled “Screams Without Words
[[link removed]]”
about allegations of sexual assault during the October 7 attack. The
report was widely criticized for weak sourcing and citing cases that
lacked physical evidence. The Times, The Intercept reported in
January, pulled a related episode of its podcast
[[link removed]] “The
Daily” over issues with the article, stoking internal worries it
could be another
[[link removed]] “‘Caliphate’-level
journalistic debacle."

In the “Screams Without Words” story, the Times quoted two Zaka
figures, one being Landau. “I did not take pictures because we are
not allowed to take pictures,” Landau said. “In retrospect, I
regret it.”

The Times beatific portrait of Zaka from January 15 seems to take an
approach of blind trust in Zaka statements, suggesting that perhaps
Landau did not say children were beheaded; that he “worries about
getting details right”; that he diligently gathers human remains;
that Zaka isn’t trained in forensics; and, finally, that women were
subjected to sexual violence.

Yet these are Landau’s assertions, as is his claim that Zaka
volunteers can’t take pictures of the dead. Haaretz reported that
Zaka “released sensitive and graphic photos” from massacre sites.
There is news footage
[[link removed]], showing remains
being carried on stretchers, labeled “Videos taken onsite by Zaka
volunteers.” And Greiniman, the Zaka deputy commander, has bragged
[[link removed]] at least
[[link removed]] three times
[[link removed]] of “all the
pictures and all the evidence, we have everything to prove it” —
but nothing has ever been publicly produced.

Zaka always seemed ill-suited for the task of forensics. In the 1980s,
Meshi-Zahav led an extremist ultra-Orthodox movement called Keshet
[[link removed]], which
protested archaeological digs and autopsies as religious desecration.
Keshet members reportedly terrorized doctors and pathologists by
planting fake explosives at their homes and sending them bullets with
a note “this time it’s only in the mail.”

The group has also operated a legal
[[link removed]] department “for decades”
whose purpose was to block police and pathologists from conducting
medical examinations on dead bodies, which has hampered
[[link removed]] criminal investigations. No Western media
outlet has asked why an organization hostile to forensic pathology was
allowed to bungle the most significant forensic evidence in Israel’s
history.

Zaka acknowledges the shortcomings of testimony from its own members.
Haaretz debunked
[[link removed]] Landau’s
tale of the pregnant woman’s corpse in Kibbutz Be’eri whose fetus
was cut out by Hamas attackers. There is no independent corroboration
of Landau’s claim, Kibbutz Bee’ri denied that the incident
occurred there, police said they have no record of the case, and a
“pathology source” at the main morgue did not know of the case.

In a statement to Haaretz on the lack of supporting evidence for its
volunteers’ accounts, Zaka said: “The volunteers are not pathology
experts and do not have the professional tools to identify a murdered
person and his age, or declare how he was murdered, except for
eyewitness testimony.”

_Tali Shapiro contributed research to this story._

_Arun Gupta is a journalist who has written for the Washington Post,
The Nation, Raw Story, The Guardian, and Jacobin. He is a graduate of
the French Culinary Institute in New York and author of the upcoming
“Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction: A Junk Food-Loving Chef’s
Inquiry Into Taste” (The New Press)._

_Thanks to The Intercept for permission to repost this article._

_At The Intercept, we investigate powerful individuals and
institutions to expose corruption and injustice. We see journalism as
an instrument of civic action. We’re here to change the world, not
just describe it.  As a nonprofit organization, The Intercept relies
on donations from our readers and listeners as a key funding source
for our journalism. You can help us hold the powerful to account and
tell stories you won’t find elsewhere._

* Hamas
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