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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.”