AP News53%
Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesperson has gone viral, inspiring fear and fascination 39%
By Melanie Lidman0%
6/8/2026, 10:05:21 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Availability Heuristic, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 32.6% saturation with 293 hits. Analysis detected 2,479 faulty-reasoning hits from 898 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 44.3% and a BS Rank of 39% (13,537 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 61.80% of the article peer group.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — For over 2 1/2 years, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza and Lebanon have lived in dread of Avichay Adraee’s next social media post.
Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesman has been the animated face of its campaigns and the main source of warnings ahead of strikes and major offensives.
That has made him one of the most recognizable Israelis in the Arab world — a focus of fury as well as some fascination.
In social media videos shared to his 2.5 million followers across platforms, the colonel appears in military fatigues, gesticulating as he delivers official statements and mocks Israel’s enemies, often using satire or pop culture references, all in fluent Arabic.
In the wars sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, his social media accounts have carried warnings for civilians to leave — sometimes at a moment’s notice — areas shaded in red on maps of Gaza and Lebanon.
Millions have paid heed, with hundreds of thousands seeking refuge in squalid tent camps.
Adraee, who is retiring this year, takes pride in his work.
Asked to respond to the fact that many associate him with death and displacement, he said he has helped Arabs to better understand Israel’s military operations.
“Because of these evacuation orders, many millions were saved,” he told The Associated Press.
“There’s no other army in the world that acts this way.”
The ‘face of evil’ for many Palestinians and Lebanese
Israel’s offensive in Gaza killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced most of the population of some 2 million, often multiple times, before a fragile ceasefire took hold in October.
Its latest war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon has killed some 3,500 people and displaced over 1.2 million.
Both campaigns have drawn allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which Israel has adamantly denied, often through spokespeople like Adraee.
The grim warnings also have made him something of a celebrity.
In Lebanon, a look-alike delivery driver posts satirical videos and pranks unsuspecting residents, showing the fear Adraee inspires.
From talking head to social media influencer
Adraee became the military’s first Arabic-language spokesperson in 2005, doing interviews with TV outlets, including regular appearances on the increasingly influential Al Jazeera.
He said 2011 marked a turning point with the rise of social media, which was used to great effect during the Arab Spring uprisings that year.
“People know me, we’ve been through so many wars,” he said.
“But the revolution of social networks in 2011 allowed us to lean on the persona of Avichay.”
Adraee wants his videos to go viral, leaning on the casual nature of social media to get his message across.
The military’s claim to have found Hamas infrastructure under a luxury hotel in Gaza made little impact, but Adraee said his satirical video of a Hamas leader leaving a Trip Advisor review for the tunnels was widely shared.
He has sent birthday messages to singers and holiday greetings to Arab influencers, even exchanging public messages with Lebanese journalists who work for Hezbollah-linked outlets.
“We want people to be exposed to the really important and serious messages, the information we’re trying to convince them of, but if you want them to remember you, you have to be more creative,” he said.
Social media, he said, allows him to “talk directly to the people, above the heads of the government.”
Accusations of incitement after the killing of journalists
It’s not unusual for military spokespeople to have adversarial, if professional, relations with reporters.
But Adraee has been accused of justifying the killing of some journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says there is a “repeated pattern” in which Adraee “publicly labels Palestinian and Lebanese journalists as militants or terrorists — often without presenting verifiable evidence — before or after they are killed in Israeli strikes.”
After a strike in March killed three journalists in Lebanon, Adraee’s account published a photo of one of them, Ali Shoeib, in military fatigues.
The image was later determined to be computer generated.
Adraee said it was a mistake not to label the photo as “illustrative,” but insisted Shoeib was a known Hezbollah operative who spied on Israeli positions while working as a reporter for a Hezbollah-linked outlet.
Adraee presented no evidence he was involved in fighting.
Israel says it does not target journalists.
At least 207 journalists have been killed in Gaza and 16 in Lebanon since 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Someone you can reach on Instagram
After 20 years in the role, Adraee is retiring and will be replaced by Lt.
Col.
Ella Waweya, the military’s highest-ranking Muslim woman.
Last month, Adraee received one of the strangest messages of his long career.
A teenager in a Beirut suburb reached out on Instagram and told Adraee that her school was hiding weapons.
Israel regularly bombs buildings it says are used by militants, so the message prompted panic, vehement denials by school officials and a search by the Lebanese military, which turned up nothing.
It was later revealed the girl was playing a joke with a friend and likely wanted to avoid going to class.
Adraee chalked up the whole situation as a win.
“The fact that the (Israeli military) spokesperson is someone you can write to on Instagram, that’s the whole story,” he said.
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