In September 2025, a large delegation of U.S. legislators visited Ofakim – a small town in southern Israel and one of the communities devastated during the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. During their visit, they planted trees – a simple, universal memorial act in honour of the murdered civilians.

That act has since been recast by anti-Israel activists as something sinister. Campaigners immediately claimed the trees were planted atop a “depopulated Palestinian village” – and some have gone further, calling for the legislators involved to be forced to resign.

Through a chain of factual errors, activist myth-making, and the quiet authority of “reference” sources that repeat those errors as fact, a unifying gesture of mourning has been transformed into an accusation of moral wrongdoing.

The fabrication of Ofakim as a “depopulated Palestinian village” was subsequently laundered through a media corps that hounded and interrogated participants – not over facts, but over fictions and libels treated as truths.

The truth is simple and decisive. There was no depopulated village at the site of Ofakim. No erased community beneath the tree. Yet the claim persists because it was never presented as an allegation, but instead stated and repeated as established fact – embedded, cited, and endlessly recycled.

In advancing the false “village” narrative, campaigners are not uncovering a buried injustice. They are erasing the victims of a real one – all in service of a story that never happened.

In the end we are left witnessing a witch hunt for people who visited an ally of the United States and planted a tree in memory of those slaughtered in a terrorist massacre.

The U.S. Delegation: “50 States, One Israel”

Between September 14 and 18, 2025, a delegation of 250 legislators from across the United States travelled to Israel on a visit organised by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In historical terms, there was nothing unusual about the trip. The legislators were visiting a longstanding U.S. ally emerging from a prolonged and painful conflict. That conflict spanned two U.S. administrations – beginning under a Democratic president and ending under a Republican one – with both parties providing substantial political and military support to Israel throughout. The visit therefore reflected the bipartisan nature of America’s relationship with Israel.

The itinerary included trips to ancient sites in Jerusalem, engagements with both the Prime Minister and President of Israel, and a day spent touring communities along the Gaza border that had been most affected by the October 7 attacks.

The trip to the Gaza border in the south included a visit to the site of the Nova Music Festival massacre, where 378 people were murdered and 44 taken hostage, as well as devastated communities such as Kibbutz Be’eri, where 102 residents were killed and 30 abducted. The visit concluded with a tree-planting ceremony in Ofakim, another of the towns attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

The Visit to Ofakim

Having undertaken a southern tour myself more than once, I know how emotionally exhausting it can be. The Nova site is a tragedy beyond words, and walking through the devastated family homes inside the kibbutz communities is like being transported into a horror film. Listening to survivor accounts brings it together as a devastating reality. Given all this, it is not difficult to imagine the mindset of the 250 legislators toward the end of the day, as they arrived in Ofakim to pay their respects to those who lost their lives there.

Ofakim was one of the furthest points inside Israel reached by Hamas during the October 7 attacks. At about 6 a.m., a “swarm” of terrorists entered the town and positioned themselves at key points. According to survivor accounts, they waited for air-raid sirens to sound, intending to ambush civilians as they fled towards the shelters they believed would protect them from incoming rockets. Twenty-five civilians were murdered during the attack on Ofakim, alongside eight members of the police and security forces who were killed while defending the town:

Ofakim Park was chosen as the site for the delegation’s tree-planting ceremony intended to convey rebirth and solidarity – a modest, symbolic act at the close of a long and harrowing day. The planting of trees was described as an act of remembrance, resilience, and hope. Fifty trees were planted, one for each U.S. state.

The Choreographed Backlash

An online backlash began almost immediately, as anti-Israel media figures and outlets scrambled to smear and defame the U.S. delegation.  Yet even before these posts could create momentum – on September 17 – Vermont’s entire federal delegation abruptly labelled Israel’s war against Hamas a “genocide.” After years of avoiding the term, the timing of this shift is difficult to ignore.

The statement was released while five Vermont state legislators were still in Israel. Rather than respond to events on the ground, it functioned as a political tripwire, pre-emptively framing the visit itself as morally suspect and lending institutional weight to the activist narrative that followed.

The sudden adoption of the most extreme possible charge, issued mid-visit and echoed immediately by activist campaigns and U.S media outlets, served to taint the delegation’s trip and amplify a backlash that was already taking shape.

The Genocide Lie

Whatever position one takes on Israel’s war in Gaza, it does not meet the definition of genocide. The most basic and decisive test for genocide is intent. Without demonstrable intent to destroy a population as such, the charge collapses.

Attempts to infer genocidal intent by trawling for intemperate remarks made by Israeli politicians in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 atrocities amount to little more than propaganda-by-quotation. Angry rhetoric, spoken in the wake of mass murder, is not evidence of state policy – and international law does not operate on selective outrage.

More fundamentally, the allegation fails a test of basic logic. Israel is the dominant military power in the region. If the intent were the destruction or removal of Gaza’s population, the outcome would have been immediate and unmistakable.

Instead, Israel has issued extensive pre-strike warnings, established civilian evacuation routes and designated safety areas, and – crucially – committed ground forces to urban combat at enormous cost. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting house to house. That choice makes no sense under a theory of genocide. An army seeking extermination does not voluntarily incur such losses; it uses overwhelming force from a distance.

To argue genocide, therefore, requires accepting an implausible proposition: that Israel deliberately sacrificed hundreds of its own soldiers, prolonged a costly war, and absorbed international condemnation – all to maintain the appearance of restraint while secretly pursuing the destruction of a population it manifestly had the power to eliminate far more quickly.

It is a political accusation, not a legal one, and it collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

The Delegation Returns

In light of the politicised and carefully timed “genocide” statement issued by Vermont’s federal delegation, the reaction within Vermont itself offers a clear case study in how politicians, activist media, and campaign networks can converge to generate a virtual firestorm – complete with calls for resignations – based on little more than empty smears. With the assistance of Vermont-based antisemitism researcher Rachel Feldman, I uncovered the timeline of falsehoods perpetuated by elected officials, activists, and local media.

As the delegation returned, the activist outlet The Rake Vermont published a lengthy and highly critical piece on the trip. The piece relied heavily on claims drawn from terrorist forces, UN bodies and NGOs long known for their hostility toward Israel. Crucially, however, it opened with a claim that was entirely fictitious: that the tree-planting ceremony in Ofakim had taken place on the site of a Palestinian village whose residents were expelled and their homes destroyed.

This falsehood proved catalytic. It supplied activists with a two-pronged narrative weapon: on one side, the charge of “genocide” newly adopted by Vermont’s federal delegation; on the other, the emotive claim that Vermont legislators had raised the state’s flag and planted a tree atop the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian community. Together, these claims created a moral frame in which the delegation’s visit itself could be portrayed as not merely misguided, but obscene.

The Media Storm

The media escalation was rapid. VT Digger published coverage of the trip framed around “growing scrutiny” of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Compass Vermont ran a piece that implied the Vermont delegation may have been improperly influenced or “bought off.” Most striking was coverage by Seven Days Vermont, which – in a textbook example of moral manipulation through timeline inversion – appeared to suggest that the delegation had timed its visit to coincide with the genocide statement issued by Vermont’s congressional delegation. It strains credulity to believe that any of these outlets failed to understand the basic chronology of events.

MyNBC5, NBC’s regional affiliate for Vermont and the surrounding area lent credibility to the UNHRC-mandated Commission of Inquiry that accused Israel of genocide. The UN Human Rights Council is not a neutral or authoritative body; it is dominated by authoritarian states including China, Pakistan, Qatar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. To cite a UNHRC-mandated opinion as objective fact is journalistic malpractice.

A program covering the trip on Vermont This Week was no better. It cited the same UNHRC report and repeated the unchallenged “genocide” claims, before going even further and criticising the delegation for not entering Gaza. This criticism ignored a basic reality: US officials have been advised against travelling to the enclave since a 2003 terrorist bombing of a US diplomatic convoy in Gaza that killed three American security guards. Having imposed this unrealistic and reckless standard, Vermont This Week then cited “public anger” as justification for its stance – anger generated by the same distorted local media coverage it was now amplifying. It was a perfect example of manufactured outrage feeding back into itself.

We reached out to members of Vermont’s delegation and people familiar with those who participated in the Israel visit and were able to speak with several directly, asking about the media and activist reaction to the trip. Aside from noting that the feedback the members received from constituents was largely supportive, they consistently described most of the interactions with Vermont media outlets as interrogations rather than interviews.

The Call for Resignations

With Vermont’s population now primed by a mixture of political opportunism and hostile media framing, local anti-Israel activists escalated their campaign. The five members of the delegation were branded “the Genocide Five” – and calls were made for their resignation. The Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation launched a petition demanding that the legislators step down – repeating the false claim about Ofakim – and went further by taking out a paid advertisement in statewide publication Seven Days calling for their resignation. A press conference reinforcing these demands is due at the State House on January 6 – the first day of the legislative session.

Throughout this campaign, a single accusation has been repeatedly foregrounded: the claim that the delegation planted a tree – and raised Vermont’s flag – on the site of a “depopulated Palestinian village,” thereby allegedly tying the state of Vermont “to occupation, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing.”

Except there was no such village at all. The claim is entirely fictitious.

The Non-Existent Palestinian Village

Ofakim was established in 1955 on previously undeveloped land. Its original population came from North Africa, particularly Morocco and Tunisia, most of whom were fleeing persecution and arrived having left most of their possessions behind. At the site itself the only notable pre-existing structure was the ruin of an old Ottoman fort.

This historical reality was reflected, until recently, even on Wikipedia. Just four years ago, the Wikipedia page for Ofakim contained no reference to a “depopulated Palestinian village” on the site.

That all changed on June 7, 2022, when an account using the name “BasilLeaf” introduced an entirely fabricated history into the article.

The edit asserted that a Palestinian village had existed on the site, that it occupied a “strategic location” and that it had fallen to the IDF in 1948. According to this invented narrative, the abandoned village was later destroyed by the IDF for military reasons.

What makes this episode revealing is not only the insertion of fictitious claims, but the way Wikipedia’s editorial culture defended them. On October 7, 2023 – of all dates – after another user had removed the inaccurate history section, the Wikipedia administrator account “Zero0000″ reverted the correction – asserting that the location of the village (which never even existed) “is well supported by maps.”

It is not. As will be shown below, there is not a single historical map in existence that places a populated village on the site claimed.

To support all these historical claims on Wikipedia, two key citations were provided. The first, cited as the source for the village itself, was Mustafa Murad’s 1966 work In Our Country, Palestine. No page number was supplied. The second, cited for the alleged expulsion and destruction, referenced Benny Morris’s 2004 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, with the claim attributed to page 355.

Neither source supports the claims being made.

Digging Under the Trees

The simpler case can be dealt with first. Page 355 of Morris’s book does discuss Bedouin activity in the broader region – but makes no reference whatsoever to a village called “Khirbat Futais” at the site of what would become Ofakim. The citation is entirely bogus.

The work In Our Country, Palestine covers hundreds of pages, but is split into sections. I went through the relevant pages of Volume 1 – there is no mention anywhere of a village on this site. Far from it. “Khirba” in Arabic means “ruins”, and on page 450 of  In Our Country, Palestine – in a section dealing with ancient ruins, Murad describes it precisely:

English translation:

(12) Khirbat Futais:
It lies in the lands of al-Qadīrāt, to the south of Tell Abu ‘Ajura, at a distance of approximately 27 kilometres to the northwest of Beersheba. Upon it stood the Roman town Afta (Afta). This khirba contains numerous ruins and stone-built cisterns.

In the pages dealing with the Beersheba district, Murad is notably detailed and precise. On page 449, he explicitly defines a khirba as a ruin. References to regional cultivation and crops appear earlier, on pages 335, 338, and 339, but these are broad regional descriptions. Under the manipulative hands of Wikipedia editors, such general references are later attributed to a specific, non-existent village.

Murad also provides comprehensive lists of local schools (page 441) and detailed accounts of tribal settlements throughout the Beersheba section – yet Khirbat Futais is entirely absent. This omission is decisive. It indicates that Khirbat Futais was not a settlement at all, but merely a minor site associated with ancient ruins. Those ruins continue to be identified and excavated by Israel today.

The physical remains at the site also contradict the claim. The Ottoman fort at Khirbat Futais stands within the same Ofakim park where the delegation planted trees. It was a structure built to impose regional control. The suggestion that Bedouin tribes would establish a settlement beside a fort constructed to police them runs counter to both historical practice and basic human behaviour. This was not the location of a village. It was a military installation.

You will also notice there is nothing built up around it (it is in a park) – so Ofakim was not built on top of Khirbat Futais.

Finally we can nail this down with confidence by turning to British Army mapping. A 1918 military map of the area shows no hamlet or village at this site – only wadis, tracks, and wells.

In the 1948 Palestine Index Gazetteer the site is listed only as a “khirba” (kh.) and a “well” (cn.) – there is no sign at all of a settlement. This is crucial. In listing depopulated villages in his 1992 work All That Remains, Walid Khalidi cites the Gazetteer as “the most comprehensive source available” for identifying depopulated villages. Khalidi does not list Khirbat Futais as a depopulated village. Nor does any authoritative source.

When comparing British Mandate maps with a modern one, the evidence is even more damning. In this 1942 British Mandate map, I have marked three points:

1. The Ottoman fort
2. The confluence of watercourses
3. The Khirbat Futa(e)is ruin

There was no populated village at this site. But even if one accepts the activist fiction for the sake of argument, the claim still collapses on geography alone.

The Ottoman fort lies within Ofakim Park, to the east of the town’s built-up area – meaning that even a hypothetical “depopulated village” would not have been located beneath Ofakim itself.

This Google Earth view shows the present-day layout clearly. The fort (1) is marked, as is the confluence of the same watercourses (2). From this, the location of the ruin site – Khirbat Futais (3) – can be identified, and it lies outside the town. The cistern (4) referenced in the 1948 Gazetteer can also be located. All these sites are listed in Israeli archaeological maps, which record the Byzantine-period remains – reinforcing Murad’s description of the site as “ruins”.

The closest visible Ofakim construct, at the very edge of the town – is the railway station opened in 2015. Even after 71 years of urban expansion, Ofakim has still not reached the site of the well or the ruins.

 

It is notable that the Wikipedia page in Arabic contains none of the details about a “depopulated village”. The manipulated edits are exclusively for an English audience; to provide fake stories as ammunition for gullible anti-Israeli activists who always appear willing to join a witch hunt based on little more than lies.

Falsehoods as Fodder for Fury

The response to the Israel visit is a case study in how the anti-Israel movement attempts to cement falsehoods as facts by weaponizing words and publicly targeting anyone who dares challenge their views.

There was no depopulated Palestinian village at the site of Ofakim. The historical record is clear and consistent. Contemporary descriptions, authoritative written sources, archaeological evidence, and every relevant map all point to the same conclusion: the site contained ancient ruins and an Ottoman fort, not a populated settlement.

Yet a fabricated claim was allowed to take root. An invented Wikipedia edit was defended, cited, and repeated until it acquired the appearance of fact. From there it migrated into activist discourse and local media coverage, where it was treated not as an allegation requiring proof, but as established truth. In this way, an act of mourning for civilians murdered in a terrorist attack was reframed as an act of moral wrongdoing – with five elected U.S. legislators now facing calls for resignation on the basis of that falsehood.

The claim that Israel’s war in Gaza constitutes genocide follows a similar pattern. It has been asserted without meeting even the most basic legal or logical threshold, repeated by NGOs, activists, and media outlets, and used to supply a moral framework for outrage already in motion. Together, the genocide accusation and the fictitious “village” narrative created the conditions for a media storm in which scrutiny focused not on evidence, but on smears.

This episode did not uncover a buried injustice. It illustrates how falsehoods are manufactured, institutionalised, and weaponised – through reference platforms, activist networks, and uncritical reporting – until documented history is displaced by narrative. Ofakim is not a story about a lost village. It is a case study in how easily truth is overwhelmed when evidence is treated as optional, and outrage becomes the substitute for proof.

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This piece is dedicated to Itamar Alus, z’’l, a police officer from Ofakim who fought Hamas terrorists “from house to house” and saved many lives on October 7. Itamar sadly passed away on Saturday. May his memory be a blessing.

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