Following the Oct. 7 terrorist assault by Hamas on settlements around Gaza, Haredi media, like all Jewish media, reported in great detail on the atrocities. But an analysis by Shtetl found that readers of Haredi media were told that the underlying cause of the attacks was the irreligiosity of Israelis, especially the victims.

Shtetl’s analysis showed that the news outlets attributed the attack against Israel to the country’s secular orientation. At least three emphasized the relative irreligiosity of many Israeli victims of Hamas’s attack. Two newspapers associated with the Satmar Hasidic sect suggested last week that the State of Israel is responsible for provoking the violence. And at least eight Haredi news outlets repeated a misleading anecdote about two religious communities near the Gaza border being spared due to their Sabbath-observance.

Eight Haredi news outlets repeated a misleading anecdote

On Oct. 7, Hamas militants broke through the barrier that surrounds Gaza and invaded more than 20 southern Israeli towns and army bases. That day, more than 1,400 Israelis were killed, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.

In describing the massacre in Israel’s south, eight Haredi news outlets told a misleading anecdote about two communities near the Gaza border. Kol Mevaser, the Yeshiva World News, VINnews, Community Connections, Heimshtut, Der Blatt, Der Yid, and Di Tzeitung all suggested that religious people in these communities – Alumim and Sa’ad – were spared because they observe Shabbat.

Yeshiva World News framed the anecdote using the teaching of Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein who, according to that outlet, had been warning about the “terrible punishment for those who are [Sabbath-desecrating].” To support their claim, two outlets embedded a video in their articles, claiming that it showed Hamas militants struggling to get past a fence around Sa’ad that was closed for Shabbat and ultimately giving up. But in Alumim, Hamas actually breached the fence.

Alumim resident Sarit Kurtzman, said that the Haredi news outlets were emphasizing the wrong angle. “A news title [headline] about religion saving specific [communities] can cause anger and hate – we have no room nor energy for that now,” Kurtzman told Shtetl.

Another Alumim resident, Stanley Kaye, who was not there during Hamas’s attack but heard about it from his neighbors, called the anecdote in Haredi media, “rubbish.” “The battle for Alumim took place inside the fence,” Kaye told Shtetl. Hamas militants “managed to open the gates after cutting through the fence,” he said.

According to the Guardian, seventeen Thai workers in Alumim were killed by Hamas, and according to the New York Times, the community’s barn was burned down, and in the streets, cars riddled with bullets were flipped over.

Kaye also pointed to the Nir Am community, which was also largely spared from Hamas’s violence, despite its relative irreligiosity.

Di Tzeitung, a Yiddish-language newspaper published in Boro Park, seemed to draw back from the misleading anecdote after publishing it last Monday. The outlet published an update on Wednesday saying, “It turned out that unfortunately there were also many Torah and mitzvot-keepers and even Haredi Jews among the dead and injured.”

Dr. Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queens College who studies Orthodox communities, said that this kind of misinformation is harmful.

“The harm done by spreading lies is it divides people and it bases a worldview on something that is not based in fact,” Heilman told Shtetl.

Yiddish-language papers criticized secular Israelis

Among Hamas’s targets on Oct. 7 was the Tribe of Nova open-air music festival. There, Hamas killed over 260 festival attendees, and took others hostage. Haredi media outlets criticized the attendees for their behavior at the festival, which took place on the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah, which fell on Shabbat this year.

An article in Di Tzeitung said the attack on the concert was brutal and cold-hearted – while also criticizing the victims for drinking and doing drugs on a Jewish holiday. At the event, “thousands of wild youths [were] drinking and doing drugs in the middle of a holiday,” the article said. In fact, many Haredim also drink alcohol on Simchat Torah, one of the happiest days in the Jewish year.

Heimshtut, a Kiryas Joel newspaper, similarly reported that the attendees “were hanging out in desecration of Shabbat and Yom Tov [the holiday] and with a terrible licentiousness and abomination."

Der Blatt pointed to the Buddha statue that was at the festival, calling it idolatry.

The popular newspaper Der Yid, which has been published in New York since 1953, published a poster that seemed to blame the attacks on a lack of modesty.

“We need to contemplate why God did this to us,” the poster said in Yiddish, citing “the situation with modesty,” which it said causes “the removal of God's protection from us, the holy people.”

Der Yid, a Satmar newspaper, also seemed to draw a connection between the Hamas attack and a fight that took place last month in Tel Aviv, in which the government banned worshippers observing Yom Kippur from erecting partitions in a public square to separate men and women praying. Der Yid suggested that because the state would not allow gender segregation, God punished it.

“They fought against a partition [during prayer], so God took away their partition at the border,” the Der Yid article said. 

Satmar newspapers said the Israeli government “added fuel to the fire”

In their weekly papers, both Der Yid and Der Blatt published articles saying that the State of Israel provoked the war with Gaza. 

Satmar leaders are famously anti-Zionist, partly because they oppose the Israeli government’s secular orientation, and because they believe that the Jewish people should have waited for the arrival of the Messiah before collectively returning to Israel. In recent articles, however, Satmar’s tone more closely matches that of some leftist activists in Israel and the U.S.

For example, the Der Yid article says that by occupying Palestine and “taunting non-Jews,” Israeli leaders “unfortunately added fuel to the fire and led to the current bitter blow.”

The newspapers criticized Orthodox leaders in the Israeli government. “Unfortunately, the outspoken, including the religious people, who serve in the current government cannot say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood,’” Der Yid said, quoting a phrase from the Torah.

An editorial in Der Blatt cites criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for appointing such “extremist ministers as [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir, who openly and rudely incite against Arabs and set up new settlements in [Palestinian] areas.”

But the editorial treads lightly. “In a time of trouble, one does not point a finger,” it says.