What was claimed
IDF Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi has been assassinated.
Our verdict
There is no evidence Lt Gen Halevi has been killed. He has since been quoted by the IDF.
No evidence IDF chief Herzi Halevi is dead
14 October 2024
There’s no evidence that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi has been killed after a Hezbollah drone attack in Israel on Sunday, despite rumours spreading online.
One post on X, formerly Twitter, claiming Lt Gen Halevi had been assassinated was viewed 9 million times, and the claim has also spread to Facebook.
On Sunday 13 October a Hezbollah drone struck an army base in Binyamina, northern Israel, killing four soldiers and injuring dozens of others. But there is no evidence Lt Gen Halevi was among those killed.
On Monday 14 October an IDF post on X quoted Lt Gen Halevi from the Golani Brigade Training Base (where the attack took place) saying “we are at war, and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult and the results are painful”.
Full Fact has also contacted the IDF about rumours of Lt Gen Halevi’s death and will update this article if we receive a response.
Misinformation spreads quickly during significant global events and can be difficult to contain. It’s important to make sure you check something is genuine before you share it on social media. To find out more, check out our toolkit.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there is no evidence Lt Gen Halevi has been killed.