A news analyst on i24News’s French-language news program claimed that a Hamas Telegram group had blamed Israel’s spy agency Mossad for the downing of a helicopter on Sunday which killed Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian.
The claim, which the analyst attributed to an unofficial Telegram group and acknowledged was just part of the “rumor mill,” was quickly mocked as an obvious joke that got out of hand. The post he cited also claims that the Mossad agent behind the downing of the aircraft is called Eli Kopter, a play on words that works just as well in English as it does in French, which he was speaking.
The analyst behind the report, Daniel Haik, was relaying the Telegram post late at night after the crash was initially reported, reported the Jewish Chronicle.
Raisi and Abdollahian died in the helicopter crash on Sunday after a “technical failure” forced the helicopter down in the rocky, mountainous region outside of Jolda near Iran’s border with Azerbaijan, reported the New York Times.
Iran’s former foreign minister Javad Zarif blamed the crash in part on U.S. sanctions on Iran’s aviation ministry, but no direct foul play has been alleged in the incident.
That didn’t stop posters from riffing on the “Eli Kopter” gaffe by Haik, joking that it was a real person who’d downed the helicopter in service to Israel.
“A new 🇮🇱 national hero,” posted @ferdinandoiu on X over a photo of an AI-generated Mossad ID card bearing Agent Kopter’s name.
“Exclusive footage of @TheMossadIL agent, Eli Copter, training for his mission,” posted @FrumTikTok over a video of an Orthodox Jewish man piloting an arcade jet haphazardly through mountains.
Not everybody was amused by the gaffe though.
“If this doesn’t tell you how stupid the media is I don’t know what else will,” posted @Yak_is_here.
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