In October 2025, a photo of two men crying went viral on social media. It is alleged that this is how they responded to the results of the investigation into crimes committed by Hamas militants during the attack on Israel. We have verified the accuracy of such publications.
In mid-October, Russian-speaking Facebook users distributed this photo with the caption “The photo shows a special investigator and a hospital pathologist. They are shocked and crying. The investigation determined why the women lying in Hamas pickup trucks were covered in blood up to their waists. Hundreds of people raped them.” The following detailed crimes committed by militants during the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. In addition to Facebook, a photo with a similar caption appeared on Instagram, X, "VKontakte"and other social networks.
This is not the first time such posts have gone viral. Back in October 2023, a few weeks after attacks Hamas militants against Israel, dozens of similar Russian-speaking publications with this photo and identical signature. One of the most viral was fast, published in November of that year, was shared by 4,300 Facebook users. Social media accounts X, Facebook And Instagram they began to distribute it again in April-May 2025 - for example, one of these posts received more than 1,100 reposts. The image last went viral in mid-October, shortly after the two-year anniversary of the attack.
In fact, the photo shows not the investigator and the pathologist, but the journalist of the Israeli publication Haaretz Nir Gontage and his son Amir. On October 7, 2023, the young man was at the Supernova music festival, which became one of the main targets of terrorists. That day, Amir hid from them in a nearby garden for about ten hours until he saved retired military man Yair Golan. Total during the attack on the Supernova venue died 378 people.
Five days later it was published in Haaretz article Nira Gontazha about how his family survived those events:
“That night Amir recalled what he had experienced, and that was the first time I cried. We were on the landing of our house and the air raid siren was blaring. Amir, standing two steps above me and pressing my head to his chest, hugged me like a father hugs his son, stroked my belly and asked if I remember how, when he was little, we joked that I had a child in my belly, that’s why my belly was so big.”
The same article published a photograph, which then spread on social networks with a false caption about the investigator and the pathologist.
Thus, the viral photo has been circulating on social networks for two years with an incorrect caption. The picture shows not an Israeli investigator and pathologist crying over the Hamas victims they saw, but an Israeli journalist and his son who escaped a terrorist attack on a music festival on October 7, 2023.
Cover photo: Haaretz
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