A news presenter for a French-Israeli TV channel has been ridiculed online for reporting a Telegram joke about a Mossad agent called ‘Eli Kopter’. 

Daniel Haik, a political analyst for i24 Francais, the French language version of i24, an international 24-hour news channel based in Israel was being interviewed last night after Iran’s president was killed in a helicopter crash.

i24 Francais political analyst Daniel Haik

During a live segment updating on the crash, Haik quoted a Telegram channel saying: “The pilot was a Mossad agent with the name ‘Eli Copter’, it’s not currently clear whether this is true or not, but that’s the rumour going around.” 

Haik was ridiculed for not recognising the joke, which also works in French as the word for helicopter is the same as in English.

The Eli Copter joke, which is thought to have originated on Twitter/x and was spread on Israeli Whatsapp groups, last night and later reported as fact on Hamas channels on Telegram.

The joke is a play on words using the common Hebrew name Eli to suggest that a Mossad agent caused the crash of a helicopter carrying high-level Iranian officials. After Haik’s error, it re-emerged on Twitter where some users even used AI to create the fictional helicopter pilot.

There is no indication of foul play in the deaths of the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and footage from the crash site shows thick fog in the East Azerbaijan region of Iran.