Meet Moshe, the nonexistent ‘Israeli thinker’ Hezbollah loves to quote

Addressing his followers via video this month, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem delivered a forceful diatribe against months-long negotiations between Lebanon and Israel over a permanent agreement that would entail the disarmament of his Iran-backed terror group.

The August 14 speech, marking the 20th anniversary of Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel, saw Qassem sharply castigating the Lebanese government for, he said, failing to stand up for the country and caving to Israeli demands.

Even the Israelis think Beirut is rolling over, he said, quoting from one of Israel’s most widely circulated newspapers to drive his point home.

“Listen to this passage by a Jewish thinker named Moshe Yair in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper,” Qassem told his tens of thousands of followers. “This passage is from after the second round [of negotiations]… ‘Fortunately for us, [the Lebanese] sent a delegation that loves Israel and the United States.’”

There is just one problem: the journalist and thinker Moshe Yair does not appear to exist, neither at Yedioth nor any other Israeli publication.

The speech was far from the first time the phantom Israeli writer has been cited in Arabic or pro-Iranian discourse, though he more often purportedly goes by “Moshe Meir.”

Supposed writings of “Moshe Yair/Meir” about Israelis fleeing the country by the millions or talking up the strength of Hezbollah have been cited repeatedly in the past year by anti-Israel commentators and news outlets, according to a report by the anti-Hezbollah Al Jadeed network and subsequent online research by The Times of Israel.

While the false attributions have pinged around certain corners of social media and the internet, Qassem’s speech appeared to be the most high-profile use of the contrivance yet.

His citation of a made-up quote in an official speech may not have been deliberate, but it likely reflects a broader willingness — and not only by Qassem — to use misleading or false information as a propaganda tool to reinforce narratives that serve his and other terrorist organizations.

A tool for criticizing Israel

Websites and social media accounts sympathetic to the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hezbollah, have on several occasions attributed purported quotes to the Israeli journalist “Moshe Meir” in an apparent effort to lend Israeli credibility to their denunciations of the Jewish state.

On April 4, a quote from “strategic thinker” Moshe Meir appeared on an X account called Al-Machhad al-Alami, which presents itself as an independent news outlet but regularly publishes anti-Israel and anti-American content supportive of Iran and the Axis of Resistance. (The account appears to have no relation to the Dubai-based al-Mashhad media outlet.)

“People [Israelis] are fleeing by the millions because Netanyahu destroyed us. It was not Iran’s missiles or Hezbollah’s operations that destroyed us – he [Netanyahu] destroyed us,” the purported quote read.

The post was used to bolster a narrative depicting Israel as being in a state of severe internal crisis.

Days earlier, Al-Raed, an Arabic-language news site that carries content supportive of Iran and Hezbollah, published an article citing the same supposed Israeli figure. It carried a nearly identical message, again depicting Israel as a country whose population was fleeing en masse.

“Settlers are leaving by the millions — including [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] wife and son — to the point that most cities and neighborhoods have become empty,” the purported quote read. “Most have left the country never to return, and some have completely liquidated their assets… Some are heading to Argentina so that they can have a ‘promised state’ there.”

Al-Shiraa, a Lebanese news website without a clear political affiliation, also cited “Moshe Meir” in an August 9 article criticizing calls for Hezbollah to disarm. According to the article, even Israel recognized that Hezbollah’s weapons represented Lebanon’s only source of leverage against the Jewish state.

“The only card of strength the Lebanese state possesses against us [Israel] is the resistance card, whether for war or negotiations,” Meir was purportedly quoted as writing. “Imagine if the Lebanese government included Hezbollah in its negotiating delegation in Washington. Wouldn’t their position be stronger?”

The same quote, also attributed to “Moshe Meir,” was posted on X on May 31, 2025, by Rindala Jabbour, a Lebanese media personality and labor boss who has backed Hezbollah holding onto its arms.

“This is the Israeli Moshe Meir, not me,” she added after the quote.

Days before Jabbour, former labor minister Mustafa Bayram, who served in the government on behalf of Hezbollah from 2021 to February 2025, also cited “Moshe Meir.” This time, the fictitious Israeli writer was used to convey the message that Lebanon’s new government was weak, leaving Hezbollah’s weaponry as the only thing standing in the way of Israel taking over the whole country.

“The politicians and leaders in Lebanon serve us through their confusion and contradictory positions, and work in Israel’s interest — knowingly or unknowingly… especially when it comes to the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons,” he quoted “Meir” as saying. “This is the most opportune moment for Lebanon to disintegrate. No one will be able to defend it and prevent us from occupying it except Hezbollah’s weapons, and once they are dismantled, it will be easy for us to expel everyone.”

Three days after posting the purported article and quote on X, Bayram shared the remarks again.

A possible source: A fake X account

The original source of the fabricated quotes remains unclear. But an investigation published in October 2025 found that an X account operated between 2021 and 2025 that purported to belong to a Jew of Yemeni origin used the name Moshe Yair, along with several other apparently fake identities, many of them also using versions of the name Moshe.

The report by ARIJ — which describes itself as a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to investigative journalism and fact-checking across the Arab world — found that content published by the account, which posted exclusively in Arabic, had been copied from other accounts and that the profile pictures it used had also been taken from other people’s accounts.

A current search did not turn up an active X account matching the one described in the investigation.

Notably, according to ARIJ, the account itself generally posted pro-Israel content hostile to Palestinians and the Iran-backed Axis of Resistance. Nevertheless, its posts were cited over the years in more than 200 articles by Arab media outlets.

Among them were the Palestinian Information Center, a Palestinian news outlet affiliated with Hamas, and the London-based Arabi21, which publishes content highly critical of Israel and of Arab governments opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to the investigation, such outlets presented the account as belonging to an Israeli journalist, effectively lending credibility to the fabricated persona.

It is possible that, after years of repeated citations, the name somehow evolved into a purported Israeli voice used to bolster support for Hezbollah among the group’s backers.

The switch from Moshe Yair to Moshe Meir, and now back to Moshe Yair, could simply stem from an unfamiliarity with Hebrew names among Arabic speakers. Those with little regard for whether they are quoting a real person — a group that now includes the head of Hezbollah — are unlikely to check if they got that person’s name right.

“We are not talking about a social media user who reposted an unverified story, but about the secretary-general of an armed organization that has fought wars with Israel and brought unprecedented devastation upon the people of southern Lebanon and Lebanon’s Shia community,” Lebanese journalist Diana Moukalled wrote recently. “He criticizes a negotiating process that concerns the fate of the entire country amid ongoing Israeli threats. He then invokes an ‘Israeli witness’ to lend weight and credibility to his position, only for both the supposed source and the article to turn out to be complete nonsense.”

“The issue here is not the fictional figure of ‘Moshe Yair,’ but what happens when narrative and illusion become more powerful than facts,” she added. “What facts are the decisions that could take Lebanon to war once again being based on today?”

Despite Qassem’s spurious citation receiving wide attention and ridicule, Hezbollah has yet to issue any clarification or response.

Qassem’s predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September 2024, also promoted false claims in his speeches in the years before his death. Those, however, largely involved narratives already circulating widely in Arab media, particularly surrounding Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, that sought to downplay the terror group’s atrocities.

In a November 2023 speech, for example, Nasrallah sought to attribute deaths during the massacre to Israeli fire, despite extensive evidence that Hamas-led terrorists deliberately killed hundreds of civilians.

Nasrallah also made wide use of Israeli media reports and commentary in his speeches to bolster his arguments about Israel’s military, political and social condition.

There is, however, no known instance in which he attempted to bolster an argument by publicly citing fabricated quotes supposedly written by a nonexistent Israeli journalist.