Palestinian officials accused the IDF of weaponizing trained rats to invade Gaza and attack Palestinian children in a series of reports last week, marking the latest in a series of animal-related conspiracy theories directed against Israel.
According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), Jamal Obeid, a member of the Supreme Leadership Body of Fatah in Gaza, accused Israel of introducing rats into previously uninfested areas of the Gaza Strip, calling it “a visible fact.”
“There are rodents in some areas of the Gaza Strip... that were not known here in the Strip,” PMW quoted him as saying, based on Facebook posts by Fatah-aligned media organizations Awdah TV and Radio Mawtini.
“It seems that the Israeli occupation deliberately acted to introduce these rodents into the Gaza Strip,” he continued, adding that “this is a fact and not just media propaganda.”
The IDF has not commented on his accusations.
Obeid’s comments followed an accusation made three days earlier by Palestine Broadcasting Corporation Director in Gaza, Rafat Al-Qudra, who told Awdah TV earlier this month that Israel trained rats to attack weak and vulnerable Palestinians.
"All indicators point to there being a type of rodent – rats and mice, to be precise,” PMW quoted him as saying.
“These rodents - mice and rats - are of a special kind, they are large in size, and they particularly attack children and the sick... It is believed that these rodents were developed and experimented on specifically by the Israeli occupation."
Animal conspiracy theories are commonplace
Anti-Israel conspiracy theories involving animals have been prevalent in the Arab and Muslim world for years. Following shark attacks in Egyptian Sharm-el-Sheik in 2010, some Egyptian commentators accused Israel’s Mossad of being behind the attacks.
In 2015, Hamas terrorists claimed that Israel utilized camera-equipped dolphins to spy on and attack members of the terrorist group, a claim that was further spread in a prominent Palestinian newspaper.
Since the end of the Israel-Hamas War, concerns about rodent infestations in Gaza have risen, and according to World Health Organization data, representatives in the area have recorded more than 17,000 cases of “rodent-linked infestations” in the past year. Additionally, the organization claims that more than 80% of displacement sites “report skin infections, such as scabies, lice, and bed bugs.”