Fabricated Tweet Attributed to Israeli Journalist Efrat Lachter on Iraqi Elections

3rd January 2022

Fabricated Tweet Attributed to Israeli Journalist Efrat Lachter on Iraqi Elections

The journalist’s official Twitter account did not bless election results (Getty)

The Claim

Israeli journalist Efrat Lachter congratulated the Iraqi people in a tweet, endorsing the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court’s announcement of the election results.

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Emerging story

Facebook and Twitter accounts have recently shared an alleged tweet attributed to Israeli journalist and Channel 12 correspondent Efrat Lachter. The tweet reads: “we congratulate the Iraqi people on the Federal Supreme Court’s approval of the election results, which everyone agrees that it was transparent. We also commend the national role played by leader Muqtada al-Sadr.”

A supporting image within the article body

Description: The screenshots capture the purported claim that was shared on Twitter.

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar’s team investigated the circulated claim and found that it was fake. The account that tweeted the claim is fake. The journalist’s actual account is verified and did not make any tweet blessing the endorsement of the elections by Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court.

Description: The screenshot shows the journalist’s actual account, which is both verified and precedes the joining date of the fake account.

The actual account was created in November 2011, while the fake account was in July 2017.

The fake account’s bio indicates the account belongs to the journalist and correspondent for Channel 2, not Channel 12. Misbar’s investigation found that Channel 2 has stopped broadcasting since Oct. 31, 2017, and started instead to broadcast under the name of Channel 12.

The fake tweet started to circulate following 11 weeks of controversy and tensions over the validity and integrity of the Iraqi election results, which showed incumbents’ seats in parliament being lost to Muqtada al-Sadr’s list, which gained the most seats.

Last week, the Federal Supreme Court (the highest constitutional court in the country) ratified the results of the early parliamentary elections in Iraq, which were held on Oct. 10, and overturned all lawsuits against their integrity.

Translated by Ahmed N. A. Almassri