Thread by @nehonotlishatan

Lost in Translation

Last Friday, Israeli TV aired an apparent scoop: "Pfizer: Israel agreed to exclusivity" and to serve as an experimental laboratory for Pfizer.

Apparently backed by a video of Pfizer's chief scientist, it is now making the skeptic rounds; but it's fake. 1/14

First, the exclusivity part is pure nonsense. Israel is now also using Moderna (see below - no Hebrew required!).
2/14

Also, Israel's Ministry of Health vehemently slammed the segment as #FakeNews within an hour. But the story just begins here.

https://twitter.com/IsraelMOH/status/1436387257737490433?s=20

3/14

The segment was initially aired on @N12News's popular weekend edition with a "smoking gun" – a recording of Pfizer's Chief Scientist Dormitzer speaking (in English) in an undated, unattributed Zoom conference about Israel. 4/14

But English speaking viewers immediately noticed that in the video, Dormitzer never utters the "Israel agreed to exclusivity" quote that appears in the Hebrew chyron (and in the anchor's Hebrew voiceover).

https://twitter.com/nehonotlishatan/status/1436909952245936128?s=20

5/14

Also, Dormitzer didn't utter the word "experimental" attributed to him, and said "sort of" laboratory (the "sort of" was removed in the Hebrew translation for a more ominous effect).

In short, something was lost (or rather, added) in translation. 6/14

A backlash followed, making N12 News change the "doctored" Dormitzer quote in their website; and a couple of "bad takes" Twitter accounts had a field day listing the fails in the translation and the correction.

https://twitter.com/cootallx/status/1436783812512555010?s=20

7/14

But "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes": 2 hours after the broadcast, a video was uploaded with the Israeli anchor's misrepresentation of Dormitzer's words **translated back to English and put in the subtitles**. 8/14

And 24 hours after that, another version appeared, this time with just a single frame from the video.

Dormitzer's real image and voice are now completely removed. You might think he is the speaker in the photo (he isn't; it's the TV anchor). 9/14

The frame chosen is the most incendiary frame in the TV segment: its subtitle says Pfizer views Israel as an apparently secret "experiment area" – a sensitive point to Jews. 10/14

(Nazi experiments and Holocaust references are a recurring theme in Israeli anti-vaxx posts. I ran a whole thread on this nauseating theme, tracing the metaphor back to tobacco anti-regulation campaigns:

https://twitter.com/nehonotlishatan/status/1419152933665624064?s=20

) 11/14

Once Bill Clinton was dragged into this, I thought I've seen enough. 12/14

As a proper finale, the TV anchor that started it all, @arad_nir, posted Pfizer's clarification – but *in English only*.

https://twitter.com/arad_nir/status/1436753136811757571?s=20

13/14

Lost in Translation?
Not all who wander are lost. 14/14