A 20-year-old Jewish student from Sydney, Australia was falsely identified as being the terrorist who murdered six people in a local shopping mall before being shot dead by a police officer. The student, Benjamin Cohen, fell victim to an unusual conspiracy campaign on social media platforms.
Australian police released the killer’s name only 18 hours after the attack on Saturday, in which he stabbed five women and one man and wounded 12 others, including a nine-month-old infant whose mother was murdered. Meanwhile, social media was flooded with speculation and conspiracy theories about the stabber's identity, including that of Benjamin Cohen, a 20-year-old computer science student.
Cohen was marked as a suspect in the murder for 14 hours, and his name circulated after it was published on Australia's Channel 7, considered to be a credible news outlet, lending legitimacy to those who started the false rumors out of antisemitic and anti-Israel motives.
The incident began on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. local time. Shortly thereafter, an X (formerly Twitter) account named Sonny Dan, which has a history of spreading antisemitic posts, reported rumors identifying the terrorist as an extremist Jew named Benjamin Cohen, a Sydney resident. "Only a Jew would stab a baby. Making sense now,” he wrote.
Within a short time, the post, as well as another one "confirming" the attacker was a former Israeli IDF soldier named Benjamin Cohen, garnered tens of thousands of shares. The false report continued to be spread by a well-known Russian antisemitic user named Simeon Boikov.
Boikov posted that the terrorist was Jewish, mocking those who questioned if the murder was carried out by an extremist Muslim: " Cohen? Really? And to think so many commentators tried to initially blame Muslims.”
He even posted Cohen’s actual photo alongside a picture of the terrorist, citing it as proof of his identity, claiming the police did not reveal who he was on purpose.
After a few hours had passed, 500,000 people saw the antisemitic troll's false report, and thousands continued to spread the blood libel about Cohen, reporting it as reliable news. Cohen was shocked to learn about the rumors about him after his parents received numerous phone calls from family and friends.
At 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, his father, Mark Cohen, began posting on social media that his son wasn’t the attacker and that he was alive and well. The father also called on local police to reveal the attacker's identity immediately. The police officially announced the murderer was Joel Cauchi, a 40-year-old from Brisbane.
Cohen and his father told local media the false and malicious publication harmed them greatly. They said it was clear to them the campaign was planned and that those who released it online had a clear anti-Israel and antisemitic agenda. Cohen hasn’t decided whether to sue Australia’s Channel 7, which has meanwhile apologized to him for their report, saying it was caused by human error.
Meanwhile, he continues to receive messages online. "It’s very dangerous how people could just make stuff up and destroy people’s lives,” he told Australian news outlet news.com. "People don’t really think too hard about what they’re posting and how it might affect someone.”