Israel’s Channel 12 asked the public whether it agreed that soldiers should be allowed to rape prisoners with their hands tied.
The broadcaster has never polled or broadcast such a question. A screenshot has been digitally altered to show this.
Social media posts circulating online claim an Israeli broadcaster asked the public whether they agree that Israeli soldiers should be allowed to rape tied-up prisoners, but this is not what the poll actually asked.
Multiple posts with almost identical text say: “Israel’s Channel 12 asked a question in an Israeli public opinion poll: Do you agree with the claim that a soldier is allowed to rape a prisoner with his hands tied? 47% Yes 43% No”.
The posts also share what appears to be a screenshot of a news programme with a question on screen asking, in Hebrew: “Do you agree with the claim that a soldier is allowed to rape a terrorist?” (translated by Google) and results showing 43% voted “Do not agree” and 47% said “Agree”.
However, this was not the question posed to the public and the image has been edited.
The screenshot was taken from an edition of “Friday Studio” programme broadcast in May 2022. An online version of the episode [1:51] shows different Hebrew text, which says: “Do you agree with the claim that the government relies on supporters of terrorism?“.
Moreover, a spokesperson for Channel 12 told reporters at Reuters that it never polled or broadcast such a question about whether soldiers can sexually assault people. They reportedly said on 8 August that: “Unfortunately, in the last few hours a screenshot from News 12 broadcasts edited in a trending manner has been distributed” and that “such a survey has never been conducted or shown on our broadcasts”.
Full Fact contacted Channel 12 for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
While Channel 12 did not ask the question claimed by the social media posts, it apologised for the question it did pose about whether the public agreed that the government of the time—who were supported by the United Arab List party—relied on “supporters of terrorism”.
This apology came in October 2023, over a year after the poll was broadcast, in response to a subsequent report on a different TV channel about extreme statements made by some members of the succeeding government (led by Benjamin Netanyahu), which asked why Channel 12 hadn’t posed the same question for this government’s coalition members.
You can find more of our work checking claims relating to the Israel-Gaza conflict on our website.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Channel 12 confirmed it had never polled or broadcast such a question, and the screenshot has been edited.
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