A fake news article led to a gunfire at a Washington pizzeria three weeks ago. Now it seems that another fake news item has prompted Defence Minister of Pakistan Khawaja Muhammad Asif to make a nuclear threat.
Mr. Asif wrote a sabre-rattling Twitter post directed at Israel on Friday after a false report — which the Minister apparently believed — that Israel had threatened Pakistan with nuclear weapons.
“Israeli def min [Defence Minister] threatens nuclear retaliation presuming pak [Pakistani] role in Syria against Daesh [Islamic State],” the Minister wrote on his official Twitter account. “Israel forgets Pakistan is a Nuclear state too.”
Mr. Asif appeared to be reacting to a fake article published on awdnews.com. That story, with the typo-laden headline “Israeli Defense Minister: If Pakistan send ground troops to Syria on any pretext, we will destroy this country with a nuclear attack,” appeared on December 20 on the website, alongside articles with headlines such as “Clinton is staging a military coup against Trump.”
The fake story about Israel even misidentified the country’s Defence Minister, attributing quotations to a former Minister, Moshe Yaalon. Israel’s current Defence Minister is Avigdor Lieberman.
The Israeli Defence Ministry responded on Twitter to say the report was fictitious. “The statement attributed to fmr Def Min Yaalon re Pakistan was never said,” the Ministry wrote in Twitter post directed at Mr. Asif.
Mr. Asif did not respond to the Israelis on Twitter, and as of Saturday his message was reposted nearly 400 times. Many of the people reacting to Mr. Asif on Twitter mocked him for his mistake. — New York Times News Service
