Everything's A Psyop

The Ministry of Facts wishes to address recent reports, originating from Telegram channel @beholdisraelchannel (post 73882), in which commentator Amir Tsarfati — a former IDF major and founder of the evangelical news ministry Behold Israel — announced that “the pager operation has been upgraded,” claiming that Israel had begun air-dropping explosive-laden canned fish to IRGC soldiers in Shiraz, resulting in significant casualties.[1]

The Ministry finds no corroborating evidence for this claim. We note this not to alarm, but to reassure.

It is true that in September 2024, Israeli intelligence infiltrated Hezbollah’s supply chain through a shell corporation registered in Hungary, producing 5,000 pagers laced with PETN explosive — detonated simultaneously, killing at least 37 people and wounding over 3,000.[2] It is also true that multiple international legal experts subsequently described this operation as a potential war crime, citing the prohibition under Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons against “booby-traps in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”[3] A UN panel of human rights experts described the attacks as “terrifying” violations of international law.[4]

But that was pagers. Canned fish is a food product, and the distinction is significant.

The Ministry acknowledges that Tsarfati’s channel, rated by Media Bias/Fact Check as a right-biased conspiracy and pseudoscience outlet, offered no named sources, no independent corroboration, and framed the claim as an exciting sequel to a verified atrocity.[5] We further acknowledge that the word “upgraded” implies an institutional escalation of a documented supply-chain infiltration methodology. The Coincidence Review Board is looking into the use of that word.[6]

The evidence supports the conclusion: canned fish is not a war crime. Whether it constitutes a war crime would depend on details — such as whether it happened — that remain, at this time, unverified by anyone other than a Bible teacher on Telegram.[7]