Does a video show Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying, "... I would like to send my condolences to the families of the six million people that were murdered in the atrocious terrorist attack in Jaffa ..." after Iran fired missiles into Israel on October 1, 2024? No, that's not true: Audio on a social media post incorrectly translates what Netanyahu said. An official transcript from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that Netanyahu actually said "... I send condolences to the families of those who were murdered in the abhorrent terrorist attack in Jaffa ..." There is no evidence that Netanyahu mentioned "six million people" in the transcript. According to a detection tool the voiceover in the video was likely generated with AI.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) where it was published on October 2, 2024. The caption read:
🇮🇱‼️🚨 Netanyahu:
- Condolences to the 6 (million?) killed in Jaffa
- Jaffa is irans fault
- Israeli air defense repelled the attack by Iran (?)
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 13:26:08 2024 UTC)
The 36-second video shows Netanyahu sitting and speaking to a camera. A voice speaks English over Netanyahu speaking. The English-speaking voice said, "Citizens of Israel, first of all, I would like to send my condolences to the families of the six million people that were murdered in the atrocious terrorist attack in Jaffa. And wish for a speedy recovery of those who were wounded. Just like in the missile attack, there's a guided hand behind this terror attack as well. A murderous one coming from Tehran. This evening Iran, once again, launched an attack on Israel with dozens of missiles, but the attack failed. It was thwarted thanks to Israel's air-defense system, which is the most advanced in the world. And I would like to congratulate the IDF for this impressive achievement."
A reverse image search (archived here) of a still from the video in the claim showed that Netanyahu was speaking in an October 1, 2024, Israeli Security Cabinet meeting after Iran had fired missiles into southern and central Israel that same day.
Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a transcript on October 2, 2024, of Netanyahu's remarks at the start of that meeting. The first line in the transcript, translated from Hebrew to English by the Ministry, read:
"Citizens of Israel, at the start of my remarks, I send condolences to the families of those who were murdered in the abhorrent terrorist attack in Jaffa and my best wishes for a quick recovery to the wounded.
This beginning line is similar to what the English voice said in the claim, but does not mention "six million people."
Lead Stories searched for "six million people" in the transcript and could not find evidence of those words being said by Netanyahu, as is shown in the screenshot below, with red highlighting added by Lead Stories:
(Source: www.gov.il screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 15:03:11 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories Downloaded audio from the social media post and ran it through HiveModeration's Audio Detection tool, which found a "99.4%" chance of this audio being AI-generated. Evidence of this is pictured below:
(Source: HiveModeration screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 14:00:17 2024 UTC)
The Indian Express published Netanyahu's October 1, 2024, remarks on their YouTube channel. The closed captioning is in English and does not show Netanyahu saying "six million people" in the video, nor does a Sky News video posted on YouTube, with Netanyahu's words translated to English.
More Lead Stories fact checks on Benjamin Netanyahu can be found here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Israel are here.
