Controversy surrounds reports of Israeli baby found burned alive in oven

In an interview with the BBC on November 7, senior Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk denied that the terrorists who had breached the barrier fence and carried out a massacre on Israel’s southernmost kibbutzim and cities a month earlier had killed any civilians or women and children, claiming that only soldiers were targeted.

It is precisely because of these growing denials of the massacre that the accounts of the atrocities carried out on October 7 must be precise and verifiable, noted the digital disinformation watchdog organization FakeReporter in an earlier October 30 tweet, following circulation of a report by first responders in the aftermath of the carnage that an Israeli baby was found burnt in an oven.

The story has been widely published and has also aroused a lot of strong feelings—whether it is as an account of an incident which has been mistakenly misrepresented, or by people who are upset that its veracity is even being questioned.

“There are horrifying and unimaginable testimonies from the massacre in on the Gaza border, and still even today there are those who doubt their credibility—and they do so while taking advantage of specific testimonies that have no basis,” FakeReporter said in an initial post on X (formerly Twitter) following the publishing of the account.

“Denying the massacre is in the interest of Hamas supporters and other hostile elements operating on social networks," it said. "If you see a testimony that has no source or official confirmation—avoid spreading it. Inaccurate testimony has the potential for great harm.”

In a separate post the same day, FakeReporter noted: “The story about the Israeli baby whose body was found in the oven has been circulating for 24 hours and has serious consequences. The story was first circulated by pro-Israeli accounts to describe the dimensions of the massacre carried out on 7/10, but very quickly the trend reversed and the story was used to promote Hamas propaganda and claim that Israel is fabricating evidence and inflating the numbers of the murdered.”

How the incident was publicized

Eli Beer, United Hatzalah founder and president, first presented the case at the Republican Jewish Coalitions’ Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas on October 28. In his address to the convention, he said:

“"A little baby in the oven – These bastards put these babies in the oven and put on the oven," said Eli Beer, the founder of the volunteer-based Israeli EMS organization United Hatzalah. "We found the kid a few hours later."

"We saw a little baby in the oven."-- @EliBeerUH to @RJC pic.twitter.com/MBKgrgwxRi

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 30, 2023

He has also recounted the case as being first told to him by United Hatzalah volunteer Asher Moskowitz who told him about seeing the baby in a body bag when it was brought in to the identification center at the Shura army base. 

The story quickly went viral following its posting on X by The New York Sun reporter Dovid Efune, who was at the convention.

“We have not found any more references to [the case] that rely on other sources,” noted FakeReporter, which has in the past revealed Iranian attempts to interfere with Israeli politics online and revealed a breach in the Strava running and cycling app that exposed dozens of Israeli security personnel and soldiers.

Moskowitz was among the first responders receiving bodies at the Shura army base where the devastating work of identifying the victims of the massacre—many of them burned beyond recognition—has been taking place. In video-taped testimony, he recounted the incident, mentioning at one point that a heating element was attached to the tiny body.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post on November 7, Moskowitz, who is the vice-director of the United Hatzalah branch in Elad, recounted that on October 11 he had been asked to accompany families waiting outside the army base who had come to identify their loved ones. He was also asked to help with unloading bodies from the many trucks that were coming to the army base, he said. 

“There may be debates among the media about the case, but not for us,” he said.

Eyewitness accounts

He told the Post: 

“I went into the base and started to take off bodies from the truck. Three or four of us would take a body from the door of the truck to the room where they were opening the bags. One was a very small bag. I was in the room when they opened it and there was the body of a baby, I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl. Most of the bodies from Kfar Aza were burned, but what I saw with this body— it was relatively complete, but hard like a rock, and on its stomach was the sign of a heating element, like a half a circle or a big chain.

"I went out of the room," he said. "We unloaded more bodies from the trucks and when I saw someone coming out of the room—he was wearing an army uniform, I don’t know if he was a pathologist or a doctor but someone from the IDF Chevreh Kadishah [the organization that prepares bodies for burial, literally "holy friends"]—I asked about the body of the baby. He said that based on the signs on the body, it looks like they put him inside the oven alive, and he said they found the baby dead inside the oven.

"This really got to me. I have seen a lot of things in my life but this got to me," he said. "The body was not burned like the other bodies.”  

The IDF Spokesman’s Office declined to officially comment on the case.

Indeed, noted FakeReporter in their post, the IDF did not present the case in any of the three 43-minute-long private screenings of raw footage from the massacre shown to journalists as the incidents of denial have increased. The footage did include atrocities such as videos of burned bodies, bloodied bodies of children and babies murdered in their beds, the execution of a young girl hiding under a table, the beheaded body of a soldier, a burned decapitated head, and the attempted decapitation of a dead Thai worker with a blunt shovel.

Others unaware of the case

Two journalists, Chaim Levinson of Ha’aretz and Yishai Cohen, a journalist with the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) website Kikar Hashabbat, posted on October 30 after the case was made public that they had looked into it. Cohen said that he had contacted officials in the IDF, Shura army base and Zaka (a volunteer organization that also deals with bodies where they are found), who said they were not familiar with the incident.

Zaka spokesman Moti Bukchin also told Post that they are unfamiliar with the case.

Beer said that in addition to Moskowitz, another volunteer told him about the baby.

“I believe the testimony I received, not Ha’aretz,” Beer said. “A lot of people don’t believe the Holocaust happened.  Zaka took care of a few places after Shabbat; they don’t work on Shabbat. We picked up 250 bodies before Zaka was there. Our volunteers are mostly Orthodox and did not have videos, they didn’t know what time it was; we lost sense of time, it happened so quickly. There is a lot of fake [news] but this is so not fake news.”

He said it was possible that a mother hid the baby in the oven, like some hid their babies in closets and washing machines or refrigerators.

“It makes sense that a mother would put the baby in the oven to save it then Hamas burned down the house,” he said. “A lot of babies were burned by gasoline. So many babies died—why is this [case] seen as so terrible? Hamas would burn all of us. Why is someone doubting what I say? I heard it from a volunteer. This is not a made-up story. There were so many victims; the organizations—not the IDF, not Hatzalah, not Zaka—no one saw them all. This is a real story… we made a mistake—we should have told people earlier.”

“They weren’t there—we were there; they weren’t even there, not even close. It wasn’t a crime scene; it was 5,000 crime scenes. There is no way everyone saw everything,” Beer said.

However, according to Moskowitz, his identification of the body of the baby took place four days following the massacre at the Shura army base, not the day of the massacre at any of the massacre sites. 

FakeReporter continues to maintain that it has not yet been able to independently verify the story of the baby burned in an oven.

Yotam Frost from FakeReporter said in a WhatsApp message: “It deeply saddens us to be engaged in such [a] matter, but such a horrific statement should be proven and not easily published. You and [we], as representatives of organizations who care deeply about Israel and [are] dedicated to promoting a fact base[d] discourse, understand the gravity of that. I’m not sure others do.

"I suggest you follow the progress of the story from the beginning, the continuous change of the versions of the story, and fact check it," he wrote. "We could not verify it.”