Pakistani Defense Minister Threatens Israel With Nuclear Weapons After Reading Fake News Report

In an incident that illustrates the potentially catastrophic consequences of the proliferation of fake news online, the defense minister of Pakistani tweeted a nuclear threat against Israel after seeing a fake news report that Israel would “destroy [Pakistan] with a nuclear attack” if Pakistan sent ground forces to war-torn Syria.

Pakistan’s defense minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, provoked by a fake news report, took to Twitter on Friday to issue a chilling warning to Israel.

“Israeli [defense minister] threatens nuclear retaliation presuming [Pakistan] role in Syria against Daesh [ISIS],” Asif wrote on his official Twitter handle. “Israel forgets Pakistan is a nuclear state too.”

Asif was fooled by a story published on December 20 by a fake news site Awdnews, under the headline “Israeli Defense Minister: If Pakistan sends ground troops to Syria on any pretext, we will destroy this country with a nuclear attack.”

The article, published alongside another which claimed that “Clinton is staging a military coup against Trump,” suggested falsely that Pakistan was planning to send ground troops to Syria “as part of an international coalition to fight against Islamic State.” The fake report went on to say that the Israeli defense minister threatened that Israel would “destroy” Pakistan with nuclear weapons if the country sent the ground troops to Syria.

Asif responded promptly to the fictitious threat from Israel with a real threat of his own. He reminded Israel, ominously, that Pakistan also has nuclear arsenals.

But as the New York Times noted, any well-informed reader would have noticed some problems with the story. For instance, the story did not attribute its fabricated quote that “Israel would destroy [Pakistan] with a nuclear attack” to the country’s current Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, but to former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who resigned on May 20, 2016.

“As far as we are concerned… if, by misfortune, [the Pakistanis] arrive in Syria, we will… destroy them with a nuclear attack.”

Strangely, Asif also failed to notice that the story also included a fabricated quote attributed to Tariq Fatemi, the current Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Foreign Affairs.

Fatemi, according to the fake report, claimed that Pakistan wanted to send ground forces to Syria because of frustration at the slow pace of the war effort against ISIS in Syria.

“We have been frustrated at the slow pace… of confronting Daesh [ISIS].”

The Israeli Defense Ministry eventually responded to Asif’s tweet, describing the statement attributed to the former Israeli defense minister as “entirely false.”

“The statement attributed to [former Defense Minister] Yaalon… was never said,” according to the Israeli Defense Ministry on its official Twitter handle.

“Reports referred to by the Pakistani [Defense Minister] are entirely false,” the Israeli Defense Ministry added.

reports referred to by the Pakistani Def Min are entirely false

— Ministry of Defense (@Israel_MOD) December 24, 2016

Asif did not immediately respond to the statement by the Israelis, and his Twitter handle was soon besieged by users poking fun at his error.

But this is not the first time that Asif has threatened another country with nuclear attack. Earlier in September, he threatened during an interview that Pakistan would “destroy India” if India threatened Pakistan’s security. He issued the threat amid rising tensions and violence in the disputed Kashmir border region.

However, Pakistan has refrained from direct involvement in the raging civil war in Syria. But the country has stated clearly that it opposes foreign military intervention in Syria and that it does not support efforts to overthrow the Assad regime.

Pakistan is one of nine countries in the world recognized officially as nuclear states. The country became a nuclear state in 1998 and currently maintains a stockpile estimated at about 130 nuclear warheads.

Although it is believed that Israel has a stockpile of several nuclear warheads, the country has neither confirmed nor denied that it has nuclear weapons.

The website, Awdnews, which is at the center of the latest fake news incident, publishes a mix of legitimate and fabricated stories. A recent story claimed that the CIA created ISIS, while another claimed that the “foreign minister of Israel revealed that she practiced sex with several Arab personalities in order to engage in sex scandals.”

Yet another story claimed preposterously that President Vladimir Putin of Russia has promised to “defeat the Illuminati with his bare hands.”

The website also published a fake story that Jordan’s King Abdullah killed his wife, Queen Rania.

The latest incident would help to further sharpen the focus on the menace of fake news online. Fake news originates from websites with different intentions. Some are linked with governments, groups, and individuals engaged in a disinformation campaign against political opponents, while others are managed by private individuals seeking only to use sensational and provocative stories to drive traffic to their sites and generate ad revenue.

Earlier in December police arrested 28-year-old Edgar Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina, after he drove to Washington on a self-assigned mission to rescue child prisoners that fake news reports claimed were being held in dungeons beneath the Comet Ping Pong restaurant by a child sex ring operated by Hillary Clinton and imaginary evil cronies.

The incident, during which Welch fired his weapon after entering the Washington restaurant, directed mainstream media attention to the growing problem of fake news reports and forced the online social media giant Facebook to commit to monitoring and curtailing the spread of fake news reports on its platform.

[Featured Image by Anjum Naveed/AP Images]