High-quality Israeli word humor is again being taken seriously - this time in Iran.
Several Iranian news outlets have claimed that among those arrested on suspicion of assisting the elimination of Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran is an Israeli with Azerbaijani citizenship by the name of Amit Hazeh.
According to the reports, Mr. Hazeh impersonated an IRGC officer and assisted in the assassination.
The issue with the Iranian report is that "Amit Hazeh" is a satirical name, a play on words for the Hebrew for "the imposter."
It is still unclear where the Iranians got the name from, but it is part of an old genre of Israeli jokes that foreign media outlets have recently taken from Israeli social media users in an attempt to trace those involved in military operations.
For instance, when Iranian President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash, Israelis on social media joked that the pilot was named "Eli Kopter" (helicopter). The joke, which was understood in Israel, was taken seriously by several international news networks.
Similarly, after the assassination of Haniyeh, an Israeli account wrote that a Mossad agent by the name of "Amit Nakesh" (a play on the word for "the assassin") was behind the elimination. Several Turkish media outlets reported the name without understanding the joke.
Amit Hazeh joins those comical reports that were taken seriously by the foreign media. Besides the Iranian networks, Turkish networks also picked up the story about the arrest of Amit Hazeh and even published a photo of the secret agent, which turned out to be generated by artificial intelligence.