In June 2025, a video circulated on Telegram channels purporting to show two senior Israeli officials arguing in a raised voice about the consequences of the escalating conflict with Iran. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
The video shows two men - believed to be Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and the head of the national intelligence service Mossad, David Barnea - standing in a crowd of journalists. They shout at each other while reporters film the conflict. According to the authors of the posts with this video, Ben-Gvir says: “Why did you provoke Iran?!”, and Barnea replies: “I didn’t know Iran had such missile capabilities!” With captions that the altercation took place “in the ruins of Tel Aviv” shortly after the recent Iranian strikes on Israel, the video was published by Telegram channels “Live broadcast • news"(550,000 views at the time of writing this analysis, already deleted), "#Montan!"(238,000), "Uncle Slava"(202,000), Win/Win (194,000), "Pozdnyakov 3.0"(167,000, already deleted), "Banksta» (131,000), etc..
The authors of the viral publications do not specify when exactly the conflict occurred. They only note that the quarrel was captured on one of the streets of Tel Aviv after an Iranian missile strike. Using a reverse search for video frames, “Verified” made sure that the video was filmed long before worsening Iran-Israeli conflict in June 2025. This video was published on the Facebook page of the Israeli publication Israel Hayom back on March 27, 2022. The caption for the video reads: “Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir interrupted Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev’s speech at the site of the Hadera attack: “Shame on you! Talk about violence...”
Indeed, in March 2022, Ben-Gvir was not yet minister of national security, a post he took only a few months later. And at the time of publication of the video, Ben-Gvir’s opponent in this video, Omer Bar-Lev (and not David Barnea, as they wrote in Telegram channels), was responsible for this area in the Israeli government.
The terrorist attack referred to in the caption to the video happened in the Israeli city of Hadera on the evening of March 27, 2022. Two terrorists opened fire at a bus station and killed two people. Responsibility for the attack took on the Islamic State.
"Verified" found And other publications Israeli media about the conflict between two politicians at the site of the tragedy. According to the quotes given in them, Ben-Gvir shouted: “Shame on you! Talk about violence from [Israeli] settlers while Jews are being killed! You should be ashamed!”, and Bar-Lev answered: “No, I’m not ashamed. You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a nonentity!
Although several Telegram channels that published video of the altercation three years later with misleading captions later supplemented their posts information that in fact the video is old, most of them left the publication unchanged.
Thus, although Itamar Ben-Gvir was indeed captured in the viral video, his opponent in most Telegram posts was incorrectly identified - he was not Mossad head David Barnea, but Omer Bar-Lev. The video was filmed in 2022 and is not related to the conflict between Israel and Iran.
Cover photo: Telegram screenshot
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