Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 22/12/2025; Author: Amar Karađuz
What are the claims?
The attacker at the Hanukkah gathering in Sydney was David Cohen, a Jewish man from Israel.
What are the facts?
The younger attacker at Bondi Beach in Sydney is Naveed Akram, an Australian citizen.
In a firearm attack on 14 December, 2025 at Bondi Beach, one of the most famous tourist locations in the Australian city of Sydney, 16 people were killed (including one of the attackers), while at least 40 others were injured. The attack took place during a Hanukkah celebration at the beach.
Police described the incident as a terrorist attack. One of the attackers targeting members of the Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah, a 50-year-old man, was killed in a shootout with police. The second attacker, a 24-year-old man, was wounded and hospitalized under police guard. The attackers were identified as father Sajid Akram and son Naveed Akram.
As early as 15 December 2025, claims began circulating on social media alleging that the younger attacker was actually David Cohen, a Jewish man from Israel and a former member of the Israeli military (IDF). These posts shared an image purported to show Cohen’s Facebook profile as “evidence”. The profile picture shows a young man who resembles Naveed Akram.
One of these posts stated the following:
The Facebook profile of the Bondi Beach shooter was leaked and quickly removed.
The name that appeared: DAVID COHEN.
And not Naveed Akram.
Not the name that Mossad tried to serve to the public through its satellites.
➡️ DAVID COHEN, A JEW, FROM ISRAEL, who—according to the images available on that profile—served in the IDF during the attack on Gaza.
When this information surfaced, the profile disappeared, and once the real name became known, silence followed.
At the time this analysis was written, the post had more than 4.600 interactions. Similar claims were found on multiple Facebook profiles (link, link), as well as on Instagram.
What are the Facts?
After regaining consciousness from a coma in hospital, Naveed Akram was questioned and on 17 December charged with 59 criminal offenses, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act, which investigators suspect may have been “inspired by ISIS”, reported The Guardian. According to police statements reported by the media, the older attacker, Sajid Akram, was originally from India, while his son held Australian citizenship.
Claims that the younger attacker was David Cohen from Israel and that this is proven by a screenshot of his Facebook profile are false. These claims were debunked by fact-checking platforms of the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Australian fact-checking outlets, as well as our partner platform from Croatia, Faktograf.
As AFP reports, there are no official reports confirming that Naveed used the alias “David Cohen”. Moreover, several elements in the Facebook profile screenshot indicate that it was created using artificial-intelligence-based tools. By analyzing the image with the veraAI tool, available within the InVID-WeVerify verification toolkit, AFP concluded that the visual content was most likely synthetically generated.
A more detailed examination of the alleged profile also reveals a number of inconsistencies that do not align with authentic Facebook pages, as well as errors typical of AI-generated content. For example, some words on the profile, such as “people” and “engage”, are misspelled, while the “Add a new friends” (sic!) button appears in a location and format that do not correspond to a real Facebook profile. This option is normally located in the upper-right corner and marked in blue.
The fact-checking section of the Australian Associated Press reached the same conclusion. In addition to clear indicators that the layout of options in the screenshot does not match the usual layout of Facebook profiles, it also emphasized that the post visible in the screenshot was likely generated using artificial intelligence.Based on the above, we rate the claim that the attacker at the Sydney beach was an Israeli and a former member of the IDF as a conspiracy theory.
