Yossi Landau is the head of operations for the southern region at Zaka, an Israeli search-and-rescue organization. Assigned to collect human remains after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, Landau and his fellow Zaka members riveted media outlets worldwide with the horrific atrocities they saw.
Speaking through tears at the Jerusalem Press Club shortly after the attack, Landau described finding a pregnant woman in Kibbutz Be’eri in a “big puddle of blood, face down.” Her stomach was butchered open, and the baby connected to the cord was stabbed.
In Be’eri, he also found a family who was tied up, tortured, and executed with a bullet to the back of the head: father, mother, and two small children around 6 or 7 years old. An eye was missing, fingers chopped off. Landau later told CNN, “The terrorists were having a ball,” with Palestinian militants devouring a holiday meal set out by the family. Landau broke down recounting the tale, as a CNN reporter comforted him.
Long after Landau’s emotional recollections were replayed, repeated, cited, and quoted in the global media, a problem emerged: No one could find any evidence that the two massacres ever took place — in Be’eri or elsewhere.
In the case of the butchered mother and fetus, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz concluded the killing “simply didn’t happen.” As for the tortured family, no one killed in Be’eri matches Landau’s account. The one brother and sister to die in the kibbutz were 12-year-old twins, killed when an Israeli general ordered a tank to fire on a house where Hamas militants were holding them hostage. Nevertheless, Landau told these stories unchecked in interviews and press conferences.
Landau spread his tales far and wide with little pushback — telling similar stories on camera to CNN, Fox News, and the Media Line, and at an outdoor press conference. Even after reporters showed his accounts lacked any substantiation, news organizations continued to let him off the hook. The New York Times recently interviewed Landau as part of a profile about Zaka, but it did not mention either of his atrocity stories.
Western Media Whitewash
Zaka stories have been essential to justifying Israel’s all-out war against Gaza, which has killed around 30,000 Palestinians in less than five months. Speaking at the United Nations in December, Zaka deputy commander Simcha Greiniman broke down while describing alleged atrocities. He later told the same stories to a meeting of British parliamentarians.
Given its prominence, Zaka has been scrutinized by the Israeli press but not the U.S. media. A blockbuster Haaretz report found after October 7, senior military leaders sidelined Israel Defense Forces soldiers specializing in recovering bodies and preserving evidence and sent in untrained Zaka volunteers instead. Zaka reportedly turned massacre sites into a “war room for donations,” used corpses as fundraising props, “spread accounts of atrocities that never happened,” and botched forensics that are central to Israel’s claim that Hamas carried out a premeditated campaign of mass rape.
Even when Western media outlets have questioned Landau, the inquiries were half-hearted. The Times asked Landau “about reports, attributed to him, that children had been beheaded on Oct. 7.” It reported: “Mr. Landau denied making the claim, though he acknowledged sometimes misspeaking in the immediate aftermath of the attack. What he saw himself, he said, was a small, burned body with at least part of the head missing, perhaps severed by the force of a blast. It was unclear if it was the body of teenager or someone younger.”
While the Times said the statements had been “attributed” to Landau, there is no dispute he said them. He told the stories on camera, and the clips were posted widely online. He told CNN he found “a body, of a 14, 15-year-old. Head chopped off. We were looking around for the head. Couldn’t find it.” On India’s Republic TV, Landau said of beheaded children, “Yes, this occurred. This happened.” He made similar comments to Channel 14 Israel and CBS News. There is no evidence Hamas beheaded children or babies.
The Times report on Zaka reads like a glowing portrait of selfless volunteers on a “holy mission” to honor the dead and give families closure in accordance with Jewish law. The article could also be read as a whitewash of an organization mired in sexual abuse and financial scandals for decades. The Times never notes that Landau appears to be a serial fabulist, and other Zaka volunteers tell stories that stretch credulity.
Landau has talked openly on four occasions of inventing stories: “When we go into a house, and we’re using our imagination. The bodies are telling us the stories that happened to them.” Another Zaka official said in an Israeli Foreign Ministry video, “The walls, the stone shouted: ‘I was raped.’”
“Fictional”
Zaka volunteers have become ubiquitous in media reports about the attacks of October 7. They have been quoted by Reuters, CNN, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, NBC News, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many other outlets — with few, if any, mentions of past scandals or present controversies.
These outlets fail to scrutinize Zaka stories. Many volunteers describe extreme crimes that would leave extensive evidence yet aren’t corroborated by reporting. Greiniman claimed naked women were tied to trees at the Supernova music festival. He said he found a toddler with a knife stuck through his head and that he discovered foreign fighters — they had left their IDs in their pockets. A Zaka spokesperson said he saw dozens of dead babies and children bound together and burned. Another volunteer claimed they found a sexually mutilated woman’s corpse under rubble with her organs removed.
Media outlets have debunked numerous stories about dead babies, calling them “fictional.”
No one else has corroborated Greiniman’s story of foreign fighters. Months later, another source did claim to find five dead women tied naked to trees: According to a new report from an Israeli group, a farmer who rescued attendees from the music festival alleged the five women’s organs were all slashed and made bizarre claims about sexual mutilation. In three previous interviews, the farmer never made such claims nor is there any forensic or photo evidence to back up his account.
Instead of offering verifiable evidence of war crimes, Zaka volunteers serve another purpose: They are an invaluable part of Israel’s propaganda machine. Israeli government officials, in pushing for a total war on Palestinians, portray Hamas as another Islamic State.
In an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet, Eitan Schwartz explained how Zaka volunteers influenced news coverage.
“The testimonies of Zaka volunteers had a decisive impact in exposing the atrocities in the South to foreign journalists covering the war,” Schwartz said. “The entire state of Israel was engaged in framing the narrative that Hamas is equal to ISIS and in deepening the legitimacy of the state to act with great force.”
“The first-hand testimonies of the organization’s amazing men of grace had a tremendous impact on reporters,” he went on. “These testimonies caused horror and revealed what kind of human-monsters we are talking about.”
In the same Ynet article, Nitzan Chen said: “It’s hard for me to imagine Israeli hasbara advocacy vis-a-vis the foreign press without the amazing activity of Zaka people.”
Fundraising on the Scene
Israeli news outlets — in particular Haaretz’s investigation into Zaka — have called into question credulous media reports repeating Israeli claims that religious concerns and chaos prevented gathering forensic evidence in the aftermath of the attack.
After Zaka personnel and soldiers from the IDF’s Military Rabbinate were deployed to recover remains, much of the collection was bungled according to Haaretz. When soldiers trained in recovery were finally let in during the second week after the attack, they were alarmed by Zaka’s actions.
An ultra-Orthodox organization made up of male volunteers founded by Yehuda Meshi-Zahav was formally becoming Zaka in 1995. The group relies on donations and government tenders for its budget and after October 7 it made the most of both according to Haaretz.
All available evidence suggests Zaka needed a cash infusion. The group was nearly insolvent on October 7 according to Haaretz investigation.
Under Meshi-Zahav’s leadership, Zaka was beset by financial and abuse scandals despite knowing of cases where Meshi-Zahav allegedly sexually assaulted minors police failed to investigate him and closed case without charging him.
One teenaged victim said Meshi-Zahav effectively turned him into a prostitute and rewarded teen with a Zaka beeper and coveted certificate of volunteer work.
No mention of this history made it into Times profile or any other U.S media outlet that has featured Zaka volunteers.
Zaka fundraises on Facebook and buys Google ads for donations days after October 7 money began flowing to different Zaka outfits showered with some $242 million disbursed by Jewish Federation of North America shared in $15 million donation from chip-making giant Nvidia billionaire Roman Abramovich pledged $2.2 million to Zaka.
Zaka volunteers seemed less intent on bagging bodies than grabbing money according to Haaretz report.
“Not Pathology Experts”
The New York Times profile came after controversial December 28 article titled “Screams Without Words” about allegations of sexual assault during October 7 attack widely criticized for weak sourcing citing cases that lacked physical evidence.
In “Screams Without Words” story Times quoted two Zaka figures one being Landau who said he did not take pictures because they are not allowed to take pictures.
The Times beatific portrait of Zaka from January 15 seems to take approach blind trust in Zaka statements suggesting perhaps Landau did not say children were beheaded worries about getting details right