The Israeli embassy in South Korea is facing intense criticism for releasing a video “dramatizing” a terror attack on South Korean citizens, with the tagline “Imagine if it happened to you.”
| Al Jazeera
The video depicts an imaginary scenario where a Korean woman is abducted by an armed assailant on Christmas Day and is forcibly separated from her daughter. The Israeli embassy posted the video on Facebook on Tuesday with a caption that said, “On October 7th, Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists. 1,200 men, women, and children were killed, and over 240 people were taken hostage in Gaza…Imagine if it happened to you. What would you do?”
In Israel, it appears that they have taken their campaign in the ongoing conflict to an extreme. The country’s embassy in South Korea has released a video illustrating what would happen if Hamas were to attack the Republic of Korea on Christmas Day.
One of their main… pic.twitter.com/3kvRHpjkzg
— Torsum Zulfiqar (@SalmanTorsum) December 28, 2023
According to YTN‘s report, Israel’s ambassador in Seoul, Akiva Tor, had explained the embassy’s position in a now-deleted social media post.
We have reconstructed the horrifying terrorist incident that took place on October 7th to help South Koreans in East Asia, far away from Israel, understand the current war situation.
— Akiva Tor
This video was produced in the context of Israel’s ongoing campaign to destroy the Palestinian resistance group Hamas in retaliation for its attack on October 7. According to Israeli figures, the attack left around 1140 people dead, civilians included. Hamas also took around 250 hostages, and 129 of them still remain in captivity.
On the other hand, Israel has relentlessly bombed the Gaza Strip since October 8, killing at least 21,110 people, over 5,000 of them being children, according to UNRWA.
Every minute, every hour, the situation is getting worse in the#GazaStrip
The reported number of children killed in #Gaza has now exceeded 5,000
Ceasefire NOW. End this horror NOW. pic.twitter.com/yn6V9bWSBM
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) November 21, 2023
However, Seoul’s foreign ministry deemed the Israeli embassy’s video “inappropriate,” given the security situation of South Korea, which is still technically at war with the North, and asked the embassy to take it down.
The killing and kidnapping of Israeli civilians by Hamas cannot be justified, but the Israeli Embassy’s production and distribution of a video drawing parallels to the security situation in another country was deemed inappropriate.
— The Foreign Ministry of South Korea
Upon the foreign ministry’s objection, the embassy eventually had to take down the video in question.
The South Korean foreign ministry voiced their objection.