No, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has not announced his resignation

By: Siri Christiansen
March 7 2024

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Social media posts on X and Facebook claiming IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari has resigned. Source: X/Facebook/Screenshot (Modified by Logically Facts)

The claim

Several posts on social media falsely claim there's been a mass resignation of senior spokespeople for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), including prominent spokesperson Daniel Hagari.

Users have claimed or insinuated that this wave of resignations is due to the conflict in Gaza. 

"They're probably running away because now they know what they have done, they have gone to far," one TikToker speculated in a video seen over 3,400 times. "Israel's army is in turmoil," reads an X post seen over 2 million times. Another X post with 61,000 views claims the resigned spokespeople are "acknowledging their defeat and failure against Palestinian factions due to not achieving war objectives and committing crimes against Palestinian civilians."

One Facebook post said those who left their posts cited "frustration and disappointment with the military leadership and the government."

However, the claim originates from a news website that did not provide a source, and the IDF has denied the claims regarding Daniel Hagari.

What we found

Several news sites reporting on this story, including Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Middle East Monitor, and Jordan News, all refer to an article from the Israeli website Channel 14, published on March 3.

Logically Facts translated the Hebrew article to English using Google Translate. The article, headlined "Shocks in the IDF spokesman: Despite the war – a wave of departures of senior officials," claims that "a large number" of spokespeople recently announced their retirement.

The article does not explicitly state that the alleged resignations are related to the war in Gaza and writes that "the picture is complex," as "people reach retirement age and leave for no particular reason," but that "the number of people who retire at once during a war is unusual." The article includes no direct quotes from any of the featured persons regarding their resignations, and no other source is stated other than Channel 14's own political correspondent, Tamir Morag.

According to The Times of Israel, the "incendiary right-wing" news broadcaster Channel 14 was a "largely dismissed bit player in the media industry" until its viewership grew exponentially in 2023, which sparked concern due to its "repeated scandals" and charges of "pro-Netanyahu propaganda." The channel has been described as "the Israeli answer to Fox News" by Ayala Panievsky, a research fellow at Cambridge University and City University of London specializing in right-wing populism, who, in a 2023 opinion piece in the Israeli news outlet Haaretz, wrote that Channel 14 is "propagandistic."

Following Channel 14's reporting on the "mass resignation," The Jerusalem Post contacted an IDF source that confirmed that three of the officials mentioned in the misleading report, namely Col. Schlomit Muller-Butbul, Richard Hecht, and Merav Granot, are indeed retiring, and that Moran Katz has completed her contract and did not extend it further. According to the source speaking to The Jerusalem Post, two of the persons named by Channel 14 – Tzofiya Moshkovitz and Daniel Hagari – are not resigning.

Logically Facts did not find any reporting of the "mass resignation" from any established, credible news source, with the exception of Al-Jazeera, which issued a retraction on March 4 and wrote in an X post that the information regarding Hagari was "incorrect and the Israeli army has since denied it as 'false.'" 

X post by Al Jazeera retracting its report on the claim. (Source: X)

IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner also commented on the situation in a post on X, calling it "false, misleading, and downright poor journalism," and confirmed in comments that Hagari is not leaving his position. Hagari was also featured in a video uploaded to X by the IDF's official account on March 5, indicating he remains in post.

X post by Lt. Col. Peter Lerner dismissing the Channel 14 claim. (Source X)

The verdict

At least four IDF spokespersons have resigned due to reaching their retirement age or the end of their contract, but at the time of writing, neither the IDF nor Daniel Hagari has publicly announced his resignation. Because the only source of this claim is an unreliable news site, we have rated it as false. 

Due to the lack of independent, third-party verification on the matter, and the heightened situation of the Israel-Hamas war, there is a possibility that new information could come at a later stage. Logically Facts will update this fact-check accordingly.