Category: News

Claim:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel “is equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11. Sixteen 9/11s that occurred not very far from here.”

Rating:

On Sept. 24, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly, where many delegates walked out at the beginning of his speech. Following his speech, many people online attributed various quotes to Netanyahu, with some claiming he said Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, was equivalent to “sixteen 9/11s.”

According to numerous posts shared on Instagram (archived), X and Facebook, Netanyahu said the Oct. 7 attacks were “equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11 — 16 9/11s.”

The quote was correctly attributed to Netanyahu. He was comparing the number of Israeli casualties in the Oct. 7 attacks to 9/11 deaths relative to both countries’ populations.

During his speech, Netanyahu referred to the number of people killed in Hamas’ attack on Israel before drawing the comparison to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He said (emphasis ours):

These Hamas monsters, they slaughtered Holocaust survivors. They burned babies alive in front of their parents. They beheaded our men. They brutally raped our women and then they murdered them.

Altogether, they slaughtered 1,200 Israelis that day.

I want to give you an idea of what this means for a country of 10 million. Proportionately, this is equal to 40,000 innocent Americans slaughtered in less than 24 hours. That’s 16 times 9/11. Sixteen 9/11s that occurred not very far from here.

Netanyahu said the above at the 11:28 mark in the video below:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not address the 9/11 comparison, but accused Netanyahu of repeating “baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians,” the New York Times reported. 

As Netanyahu approached the stage for his speech, a mixture of boos and cheers erupted and many delegates staged a mass walkout. Netanyahu defended Israel’s attack on Iran and denied accusations of committing genocide in Gaza. 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a prerecorded speech as the United States denied him a visa to attend the UNGA. Abbas said Palestinians were living through one of the most dangerous periods in their history and that Israel was engaging in “killing, destruction, starvation, attempts at displacement, as well as a genocidal war that has created an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.” He called Israel’s actions a “malicious colonial scheme aimed at making the lives of Palestinians more difficult in their homeland and forcing them to leave it.”

For further reading, Snopes has reported on many claims about Netanyahu. 

Sources

A rumor spread in September 2026 that U.S. President Donald Trump was on track to save the United States billions of dollars by invoking a supposedly unenforced law to deny certain immigrants entry into the country. 

Social media posts (archived) claimed that Trump was beginning to enforce the Immigration Act of 1882, which denies entry to anyone who is a “convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of themselves without becoming a public charge.” These posts alleged the enforcement measures were expected to kick 5.6 million migrants off government welfare programs and save the U.S. government $13 billion a year. 

The claim was misleading for multiple reasons. 

Trump was not “invoking a long-unenforced law.” Rather, his administration changed the government’s interpretation of the Immigration Act of 1882’s “public charge” language to further restrict which immigrants can enter the country or receive permanent residency. The new rule, which went into effect on Sept. 18, 2026, applies to immigrants based on their use of public benefits.

It’s true the Department of Homeland Security estimated the policy change will save federal and state governments $13.05 billion per year, supposedly affecting an estimated 1.3 million individuals, not 5.6 million. (It’s possible the “5.6 million” number in social media posts originated from a misreading of an analysis about the rule’s impact on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.)

However, the true impact of the rule is unknown. 

Most noncitizens who do not have permanent resident status are not eligible for many federal assistance programs, which means the rule generally targets people seeking green cards for permanent residency. 

Immigration and family policy experts fear the change could have far-reaching consequences for immigrant families and local communities. A group of Democratic-led cities and states have filed two separate lawsuits against the rule, arguing it will drive up administrative costs, change states’ funding for public benefits and pressure people into forgoing legal access to benefits. 

We asked for the DHS’ response to those accusations, and we await a reply. Because the courts have not yet ruled in those cases as of this writing, it’s unclear if the administration’s interpretation of the Immigration Act of 1882 is lawful and the DHS can fully implement it.

Considering that major unknown, we did not put a rating on this claim.

Here’s what you should know. 

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the rule largely doesn’t apply to immigrants who apply for green cards due to a humanitarian status like asylum. Meanwhile, it does apply to immigrants who are relatives of U.S. citizens, employed in the country and working with the American military, among others.

The U.S. government previously stated that immigrants in the latter groups can be denied entry or legal permanent residency based on certain guidelines to determine whether they are a “public charge” — a label based on people’s use of government assistance or the perceived possibility they’ll need it in the future.

When Congress first used the term “public charge” in the Immigration Act of 1882, many social safety net programs that exist today were not around, as Kunal Parker, a historian at the University of Miami School of Law, told NPR in 2019.

In turn, federal officials have reconsidered how to enforce and define the 1882 provision.

In 1999, a memo by the Department of Justice formally defined “public charge” as a person “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence,” as demonstrated by their use of public cash assistance, like Supplemental Security Income through Social Security, or long-term institutionalization at the government’s expense. (See Page 1, under “Definition of ‘Public Charge,’” in the memo.)

The memo stated: “Officers should not place any weight on the receipt of non-cash public benefits (other than institutionalization) or the receipt of cash benefits for purposes other than for income maintenance.”

That meant immigration officers could not consider benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and free or reduced school lunches as disqualifying factors for green cards (unless the person was in, or likely to need, a public institution for long-term care).

In 2019, the first Trump administration issued a new rule that redefined “public charge” to include immigrants who receive “one or more public benefits,” including some types of Medicaid, housing assistance and other non-cash benefits, “for more than 12 months” in total within any 36-month period. 

The courts struck down that rule after a lengthy legal battle.

In 2022, former President Joe Biden issued a new policy that closely aligned with the 1999 memo’s definition of “public charge.” 

Trump admin’s 2026 rule

In July 2026, the Trump administration announced its new rule that rescinded Biden’s 2022 guidelines. The new rule eliminated “public charge regulations in their entirety” to give “broad discretionary authority to officers,” as outlined by the government’s Federal Register.

“DHS is restoring the basic principle that immigrants must be able to support themselves,” DHS said in a statement on X. “We are reaffirming the requirement of self-reliance, protecting public resources, and ending policies that encouraged dependency on hard-working American taxpayers.”

In other words, the Trump administration removed the existing guidelines to determine whether someone is a “public charge” and instead told immigration officers to use their own judgment to determine who gets the label. Here’s an excerpt from the DHS rule: 

While officers will not have a list of “excluded” benefits to consider, officers will have the authority and discretion to consider all circumstances surrounding receipt of any one or more public benefits and determine whether the alien is inadmissible as likely at any time to become a public charge taking into account the statutory factors and applicable precedent. The receipt of public benefits is but one consideration in the totality of the circumstances.

The Trump administration’s full July rule is available on the government’s Federal Register website. Under “Purpose of the Regulatory Action,” DHS states that officers may consider an immigrant’s use of “means-tested public benefits” (public benefits based on a person’s need for them); “any other individualized case-specific factors and circumstances,” and “any empirical data relevant to an alien’s self-sufficiency.”

“Using good judgment and discretion, officers will more accurately assess an alien’s likelihood at any time of becoming a public charge, in the totality of the circumstances, as Congress intended,” the rule says.

According to the DHS rule, officers will not consider benefits used by an applicant’s household members, including non-relative dependents. However, officers will consider the applicant’s “financial status” that led to a household member” needing to apply for or receive those benefits.”

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2026, a rumor spread that during his speech, he said the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks. 

Several users on X made the claim (archived), expressing disbelief using a supposed video clip of the speech of Netanyahu saying “America deserved 9/11” as he shook his finger in the air.

While the clip was authentic, meaning not generated with artificial intelligence or digitally altered, it omits critical context from Netanyahu’s full remarks. He was not expressing his personal belief when he said those words. A longer video showed he was quoting Hasan Piker, a left-leaning influencer, who did say “America deserved 9/11” during a livestream in 2019. We’ve left this claim unrated to account for those nuances.

At the 27:10 mark in the video, Netanyahu addressed New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying Mamdani was antisemitic and he and Piker were friends. As he did so, he quoted Piker (emphasis ours):

So to all those that are spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York, I say this: Shame on you. Shame on you for distorting the facts. Shame on you for inverting victim and aggressor. Shame on you for spitting in the face of truth. 

Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me. They tell me, “This isn’t the city we remember. It changed so quickly.” 

Now it’s no wonder. You praise criminals convicted of supporting Hamas. You count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said “America deserved 9/11. America deserved 9/11.” Some friends you have. 

You invite into your home a Palestinian journalist who filmed Hamas terrorists beating and torturing Israeli hostages, and later admitted that he refused to publish the videos in order to protect, you guessed it, the terrorists. Your wife liked a post praising the Oct. 7 massacre. She liked another post saying Tel Aviv shouldn’t exist.

It is true that Piker said these words in August 2019 while live-streaming on Twitch:

“America deserved 9/11, dude,” he said. “F*** it. I’m saying it.”

For further reading, this is not the first time Snopes has investigated claims attributing this quote to someone other than Piker. In August 2026, we found U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan Democrat, hadn’t expressed the belief that the U.S. deserved 9/11.

Claim:

The U.S. was the only opposing nation when the United Nations passed a resolution by a vote of 37-1 to promote women’s equality.

Rating:

What’s True

The U.S. was the only nation to vote against the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women’s agreed conclusions during the commission’s 70th session in March 2026. Thirty-seven nations voted in favor of the agreed conclusions.

What’s False

Agreed conclusions are recommendations for member states to work towards. They are not the same as U.N. resolutions. Also, while the claim circulated widely during the September 2026 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly, the vote in question occurred during a different session months earlier.

In September 2026, as delegations gathered for the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, a claim (archived) circulated online that the U.S. was the only opposing nation when the U.N. passed a resolution by a vote of 37-1 to promote women’s equality.  

One Facebook user who shared the claim wrote, “The UN passed a resolution by a vote of 37-1 promoting women’s equality. The one opposing vote… the United States. Remember this.”

The claim also circulated on X (archived) and Threads (archived). Snopes readers contacted us, asking if the claim was true.

The claim was mostly true, but posts were misleading in two important ways. First, the vote in question did not take place in September 2026 but months earlier, in March. Second, the vote in question was not a resolution but a different type of procedure called an agreed conclusion.

In March 2026, the U.S. was the only opposing party in a 37-1 vote to adopt the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women’s agreed conclusions for its 70th session.

The CSW exists to promote “gender equality, the rights and the empowerment of women.” The U.S. opposed its agreed conclusions, meaning recommendations for member states to work towards, that sought to ensure and strengthen access to justice for women and girls.

Agreed conclusions are not the same as U.N. resolutions, which are “formal expressions of the opinion or will of UN organs.” The CSW also adopts resolutions in a separate process from agreed conclusions. 

What the US voted against

The agreed conclusions for the CSW’s 70th session were titled, “Ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices, and addressing structural barriers.”

The document “urged” governments and other bodies to take a series of actions to “strengthen access to justice for all women and girls by 2030, while recognizing the specific needs of women and girls” (Page 3).

The document included broad, wide-ranging recommendations, such as (Page 3):

(b) Take all measures necessary to ensure that every woman and girl can seek and obtain an effective remedy from competent, independent and impartial justice institutions when their rights are violated, without discrimination of any kind;

It also included more specific obligations, such as (Page 6): 

(r) Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences;

According to the U.N.’s live coverage of the March 9 discussion and vote on the agreed conclusions, the U.S. delegation voted against the document in part because of its language about access to sexual and reproductive health.

U.N. Ambassador Dan Negrea said at the time that his delegation could not support a text that included:

… ambiguous language promoting gender ideology, vague unqualified commitments to sexual and reproductive health that can be interpreted as implying abortion rights, censorship language or broad language on regulation of AI.

Two months before the 70th session of the CSW, in January 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from U.N. Women, the CSW’s parent entity, through an executive order.

Negrea noted this withdrawal during the CSW session, saying that the U.S. thought U.N. Women “engaged in recklessly promoting gender ideology and abortion.”

The U.N. reported that the agreed conclusions passed by 37-1. The U.S. was the only opposing vote and six countries abstained.

Later on in the CSW session, the U.S. did vote against a resolution, titled, “Women, the girl child and HIV and AIDS” that called upon governments to “intensify efforts to reduce the particularly high levels of HIV infection among women and girls” (Page 4).

Forty-three nations voted in favor of the resolution and the U.S. was the only nation to vote against it. The U.N. representative for the U.S. reportedly voted against the resolution due to concerns about “terms and formulations relating to sexual and reproductive health.”

For further reading, Snopes has previously reported on other claims about the United Nations.

Sources

Claim:

A photograph taken in September 2026 authentically shows U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump staring at the camera and frowning.

Rating:

In September 2026, some people on social media shared an image that appeared to show U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump frowning as they stared into the camera lens.

For example, one X post (archived) said of the image, “For just a moment, the world saw their true nature. This is a real photo.”

The same image was shared to Reddit (archived) and Threads (archived). Some social media users doubted the authenticity of the image.

The image is authentic, though cropped. The original photo, which includes Chinese President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan during their state visit to the U.S., was taken on Sept. 24, 2026 by Getty photographer Chip Somodevilla. We were unable to find any verifiable information as to why the Trumps were frowning at that moment.

The caption of Somodevilla’s photo reads: 

A military aide, U.S. first lady Melania Trump, U.S. President Donald Trump, President of China Xi Jinping, and first lady of China Peng Liyuan depart a balcony after watching a Silent Drill Platoon Review at the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is hosting President Xi for a three-day state visit to Washington, DC where the leaders are expected to discuss trade practices, artificial intelligence and furthering ‘strategic stability’ between their countries.

An almost identical photo taken by Reuters photographer Evan Vucci is featured on Reuters Connect, Reuters’ licensable photo repository. That caption is less specific than the Getty caption, instead reading, “President Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping after watching a military demonstration from a balcony of the White House in Washington, September 24.”

Reuters Connect also offers two other, more zoomed-out versions of the same photo. These versions photo match Somodevilla’s Getty photo by including Jinping’s wife, Peng Liyuan, on the far right of the same balcony.

The four can be seen watching the referenced military demonstration in another Reuters photo.

The Associated Press’ own photo repository has photos from just before and about the same time as the Getty and Reuters photos were taken. One shows Melania Trump still looking at Jinping, while the other has both Trumps looking just past the camera, similar to the Reuters photo. 

Two other AP photos, one of Trump gesturing for Jinping to walk ahead of him and another of the pair walking side-by-side, suggests the four were heading inside the White House from the military demonstration with the two presidents walking ahead of the two first ladies.

Somodevilla apparently shot another photo a couple of seconds after his first one. In that photo, the Trumps’ frowns are less pronounced than in the photo that spread on social media.

For further reading, Snopes recently compiled a collection of real Trump quotes we’ve fact-checked.