Falling for Hebrew pun, Turkish media names ‘Haniyeh’s killer’

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran on Wednesday by a shadowy Mossad agent by the name of Amit Nakesh, which sounds suspiciously like the Hebrew word hamitnakesh, or “the assassin” — at least according to Turkish media reports.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack, which has lit a fuse under regional tensions. Soon after the strike, however, Israeli social media users fell back on a familiar practice: writing prank posts about the amazing exploits of made-up Israeli soldiers and Mossad agents and giving them punny names to match.

“After his military service, Nakesh joined the Mossad and has participated in high-profile operations,” wrote the Antalya-based Akdeniz Gerçek Gazetesi, apparently picking up joke Israeli social media posts as news. “An expert in assassinations and recruiting intelligence sources, Nakesh took part in several operations against elements whom Israel considers hostile.”

The newspaper speculated that Nakesh is a Jew of Indian origin given his first name, Amit, which it said is popular in India.

Though they were slow to catch on to the prank, Turkish outlets eventually scrubbed all mentions of Nakesh — but not before they caught the attention of Israelis on social media.

By Thursday morning, an X account attributed to Nakesh popped up.

https://twitter.com/Kobicohen64/status/1818894099421802625

“Hi friends, Mossad agent Amit Nakesh here — a friend of the pilot Eli Copter,” the account posted, sharing a picture of Turkish reports about the agent.

Mossad agent Eli Copter (“helicopter”) was behind the May 19 chopper crash that killed Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian — at least according to Israeli social media quipsters.

The French-Israeli news channel i24 had to issue an apology after falling for that joke.