How social media falsely accused a 20-year-old Jewish student of being behind a mass stabbing

A claim that the suspect behind the stabbing that killed six people at a Westfield Bondi Junction shopping mall in Sydney, Australia on Saturday was a Jewish university student named Benjamin Cohen spread like wildfire on social media over the weekend.

Only one problem: Cohen was misidentified and had absolutely no involvement whatsoever. In reality, the attacker was named by authorities as Joel Cauchi, a 40-year-old man with a history of mental illness.

The claim was spurred by Australia's Channel 7, who mistakenly named Cohen as the suspect after rumors circulated online. The outlet later apologized and attributed it to "human error."

Cohen, 20, has since spoken out about being misidentified and having his name trend on social media, telling News.com.au that "people don’t really think too hard about what they’re posting and how it might affect someone."

"It’s very dangerous how people could just make stuff up and destroy people’s lives," he said.

In a statement posted to TikTok, Cohen added: "It's extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating misinformation like this without even the slightest thought put into fact checking, but what's even more disappointing to me is a major news network doing this—using my name without waiting for a statement from the police to verify this or going out to try to verify it themselves."

@the.australian

Channel 7 has blamed “human error” for identifying the wrong man as the knife-wielding murderer who killed six people at Sydney’s Bondi Junction Westfield on Saturday. This is Ben Cohen, falsely named as the murderer, who is a first-year UTS student. The murderer’s name was Joel Cauchi.

♬ original sound - The Australian

According to an analysis by ABC Investigations, a series of accounts with tiny followings were responsible for the initial claims, before it got picked up by a pro-Putin influencer, who shared it on both X and Telegram.

Now, prominent accounts that spread the false information are walking back their initial posts—and many are getting completely shredded by critics for their role in spreading false information.

"Yesterday I made a massive mistake," former mixed martial artist-turned-social media political commentator Jake Shields wrote on Sunday. "Everyone was posting there was an Islamic terror attack In Australia I saw false information saying he was Jewish and posted it. It turns out he was neither was correct and everyone on both sides who posted fucked this story up. I'll try and do better in the future."

One critic quipped in response to Shields' post: "You can’t just falsely blame a terrorist attack on a random twenty year old Jewish Australian uni student and then say 'Whoops, my bad.'"

Others called out Maram Susli, a Syrian-Australian pundit with strong anti-Israel views, for her statements after the attack.

Susli wrote in multiple posts before the attacker was named that he "looks Israeli" and said that "the Israeli factor in this can’t be ignored." Her posts amplifying Cohen's name remain up, though she has stated that she got the name from Channel 7's reporting, so the issue of misidentification rests on them.

"The truth is I made the mistake of trusting the mainstream media, something that I don't do often," she wrote on Sunday. "I am truly sorry for this error and any hurt it may have caused. I didn’t mean to spread incorrect information, but I was deceived like thousands of Australians by Channel 7 news who owe Benjamin Cohen an apology."

She added that she felt compelled to share the reports that Cohen was responsible to counter the "overwhelming commentary was that the attacker was a Muslim or 'Hamas.'"

Indeed, immediately after the attack, some pundits and accounts took to social media to baselessly claim the attacker was a radical Islamist—a claim that proved to be as untrue as the attacker being motivated by Zionism.

Susli has threatened defamation suits against some individuals attributing the mistaken release of Cohen's name to her instead of Channel 7, but has also garnered the support of Shields amid the wave of backlash.

"Stereotypes exist for a reason," he said of a possible lawsuit brought by Cohen. "Thousands of Journalists falsely accused Muslims but I bet there won't be a lawsuit."

Another attack in Australia—Monday evening's stabbing of several churchgoers and a bishop mid-sermon—drew similar initial responses, with a slew of social media accounts claiming the assailant looks Jewish or Israeli. Police say none of those injured received life-threatening injuries.

But much like the incident with misidentifying Cohen, authorities have not released the name of the suspect, who is currently in custody.

Citing a photo of some of the discourse around how the suspect "looks Jewish," one X user commented: "Benjamin Cohen strikes again."

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