Are Israeli settlers trying to leave the country by the thousands after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing hundreds of settlers along the Gaza Strip border? No, that's not true: There have been no news reports of Israelis crowding Tel Aviv´s Ben Gurion international airport and trying to leave the country en masse.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on October 8, 2023. Its caption said (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff) "the video shows a huge crowd at the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, from where thousands of settlers are trying to leave as they fear for their lives." The comments read (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff):
They have brought it on themselves with their aggressive policy towards Palestine.
Do not take them in, where will they go, they will take your land as locusts.
Let them flee to the US, there will be peace and they will flourish there.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Oct 10 09:24:26 2023 UTC)
There are no news reports of thousands of Israelis trying to flee the country. A Google search for the phrase in Czech "IzraelÅ¡tà osadnÃci prchajà z Izraele," which translates into English as "Israeli settlers are fleeing Israel," did not yield any relevant results from the relevant news websites it indexes (archived here).
However, many international travelers were stranded at the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv as hundreds of flights from major European and US airlines were cancelled immediately after Hamas gunmen started infiltrating Israel and launching airstrikes against the country.
The various airlines announcing suspension of flights can be found here, or here, or here. Some countries, including Switzerland, Poland and Hungary, have organized repatriation flights to Israel, as the fighting continued and Israel formally declared war on Hamas.
The Israeli press reported on Israeli citizens scrambling to get on flights that were still operating to get back home here, pointing out that some of those were the reservists of the Israeli army, looking to join the fight.
