On October 20, Belarusian propaganda-run regional media, via their English-language accounts on the social network X, published posts claiming that a blogger from Sviatlana Tsihanouskaya’s team had said on Ukrainian television that the leader of the Belarusian opposition called for killing Palestinian children.
There were posts with approximately the same content on social networks of the following propaganda media outlets: ‘Zheltye Slivy’, ‘BOBRlife’ (account of the newspaper ‘Babruiskaye zhytstsio’), ‘Lida News’, ‘Vesnik Cherykaushchyny’, ‘Novosti Kostyukovich’, ‘Selskaye zhytstio’ (newspaper of the town of Krugloe), ‘Peramogi Shliah'’ (newspaper of the town of Vileika), redflag.by (account of the newspaper ‘Chyrvony stsiag. Krasnapolle’) and others.
They all presented Tatyana Martynova, journalist, radio host, and political emigrant who previously worked on the Belarusian state TV channel ONT — she was presented as a blogger from Sviatlana Tsihanovskaya’s team. Since the spring of 2022, the media person mentioned above has appeared on the Ukrainian TV channel ‘February Morning’. Also, she runs a political blog on YouTube ‘Stop Being Afraid’. Tatyana Martynova does not sympathize with Tsihanouskaya and has nothing to do with her office.
On the air of the Ukrainian TV channel ‘Priamyi’, Martynova expressed her opinion about Palestinian children saying that from childhood they have been taught to hate Jews and this was how they differed from the Israeli kids.
Here is what Tatyana Martynova exactly said:
“Nowadays we have: here is your vaunted democracy, in France rallies in support of Palestine were banned. So, what is the difference between Israeli children and unfortunate Palestinian children? I'll tell you how Israeli children differ from Palestinian children!
When an Israeli child grows up, it’s not just about love and prosperity, and so on. He does not come to school, where they begin to teach him “kill!”. And at the age of 16, his mother does not give him a weapon and says: “Go kill a Jew!” That's the difference!
Regarding the Israeli mother, and the Palestinian mother either… I understand that I am now saying things that are generally close to Nazism, but this is not about Nazism. This is about the fact that these people act that way…
Hamas came to power there, and absolutely everything depended on it: what to teach children, who get the opportunity to move up the social elevator, in what conditions they live, how families are built, how adults think, and what they teach their children.”
Then Martynova did not return to the topic of the difference between Israeli and Palestinian children either. There was no call to kill Palestinian children in her statement.
Tatyana Martynova comments on various political events, and cannot act as an expert on the topic of the Israel—Hamas war.
