No, Haifa Is Not Being Evacuated: Debunking a Viral Lie

While visiting family in Europe, I received a video claiming that Haifa — my home — was being evacuated. A quick search showed the claim was false. The clip came from a TikTok creator with tens of thousands of followers who has been spreading dramatic, inaccurate claims about Israel. This is a breakdown of what he said and why it’s wrong.

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A Canadian friend sent me a video claiming that residents of Haifa and Tel Aviv were being evacuated. Since I live in Haifa and was abroad at the time, I was stunned. Surely my daughter or friends would have told me if I couldn’t return home next week. A quick Google search showed that the only “evacuation from Haifa” stories were from October 2023, when foreign nationals were flown out after the Hamas attack. Nothing about Israelis being evacuated now.

So who was making this claim? A TikTok user named Eric Warsaw, a Canadian with over 40,000 subscribers and thousands more followers. I had never heard of him. Neither had my relatives in Toronto. Google didn’t know him either. Yet he has accumulated more than half a million likes. That is far too many people exposed to misinformation.

His video is only ninety seconds long, but long enough to pack in two major falsehoods.

His first claim is that Israelis are fleeing major cities to avoid being bombed. This is simply untrue. Israel has endured rocket fire for decades, and while the threat is real, there has been no mass evacuation of Haifa or Tel Aviv. He then adds that Israelis are creating traffic jams and even driving on the wrong side of the road. It sounds like a scene from a disaster movie, not reality.

He goes on to say that Iran has “promised” to bomb Israel in retaliation for Israel “assassinating all its people travelling to Syria.” This framing ignores the fact that the individuals targeted were senior members of the IRGC and Hezbollah involved in coordinating attacks against Israel. These were not tourists with carry‑on luggage. They were operatives planning violence.

His second major claim is even more outrageous. He says Russia is angry at Israel because Israel and Ukraine supposedly hired men to carry out the Moscow concert hall attack that killed 139 civilians. ISIS claimed responsibility. Putin has made political accusations, but no credible reporting has implicated Israel. The articles Warsaw flashes on screen do not support his claims. He appears to read only the headlines, not the content.

He then asserts that Russia is “poised near Israel’s Golan Heights” because of this supposed Israeli involvement. In reality, Russia’s presence in Syria is tied to its long‑standing alliance with the Assad regime and its opposition to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and Iranian targets.

He also warns that Lebanon is angry at Israel for “attacking deep within the country,” without mentioning that the targets were Hezbollah positions.

Finally, he concludes that Israel is “really really scared” and that Lebanon, Iran and Russia all have the right to defend themselves against Israel. This framing ignores the context of terrorism, rocket fire and regional aggression. It also echoes long‑standing conspiracy tropes.

The clip ends with a segment in which he calls George Soros an “evil rich person” while displaying an Israeli flag next to Soros’s name — a bizarre pairing given Soros’s well‑known hostility toward Israel.

The bottom line: none of Warsaw’s claims about evacuations, bombings or geopolitical motives are supported by facts. If you see dramatic claims on social media, read the actual articles, not just the headlines someone flashes on screen. And don’t let strangers on TikTok tell you whether or not you can go home.

You can read the full indepth Substack version of this article here.

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