New Orleans Terror Attack Spawns Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

Early in the morning on January 1, 2025, a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people celebrating the start of the new year in New Orleans. This murderous attack resulted in the death of 15 people with dozens more injured. The perpetuator, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was an American citizen and army veteran from Texas. Surprisingly, an ISIS flag was found in his vehicle and, a few hours before the attack, he published videos on Facebook pledging his allegiance to the jihadist group.

While this attack was horrible enough on its own, social media users were quick to turn this tragedy into an anti-Jewish conspiracy-fueled hate fest. Throughout history, antisemites have accused Jews of being responsible for a host of major world events and wrongdoings. Unsurprisingly, this pattern continued, with CyberWell’s monitoring technology detecting dozens of posts in English and Arabic across X and Facebook blaming the Jews and Israel of being behind the attack, even though two Jewish-Israelis were among the injured.

Some users even went so far in their malicious conspiratorial accusations as to link the New Orleans attack to another New Year’s day attack that occurred a few hours later – the explosion of the Tesla Cybertruck at the entrance of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada. These posts included a variety of hateful narratives and antisemitic conspiracy theories, which we further detail in this blog.

Jews Organized & Profited from the Attack

CyberWell analyzed a number of posts claiming that Jews were behind the New Orleans attack in order to promote their interests – specifically, to wash themselves of their crimes and create enmity towards Muslims and white people. The first post below gained over 478K views!

False Flag: The Jews Did It Because They Are Evil

A prominent antisemitic conspiracy theory we identified was the “false flag” narrative. Some users claimed that ISIS itself is actually controlled or run by Jews or Israeli intelligence. Therefore, if the attacker was affiliated with ISIS, the attack was orchestrated by the Jews.

It is important to note that the “false flag” conspiracy theory appears on social media in the context of numerous terrorist attacks, hate crimes, and international crises. Recognizing the problematic nature of such content, TikTok made the phrase “false flag” and the hashtag #falseflag not searchable on its platform, in contrast to other platforms that have not taken similar steps to address this alarming phenomenon.

The post below presents the false flag conspiracy theory along with two additional antisemitic tropes:

1. Jews carried out the attack as part of their grand plan to establish a “new world order” – an alleged secret plan to control the world through a shadowy elite government.

2. A trope rooted in religious antisemitism accusing today’s Jewish people of being the “Synagogue of Satan”, suggesting that they are pretenders who, in reality, worship the devil.

In the following post, the user alleges that ISIS are Jewish and Israeli agents in disguise. They further claim that Jews orchestrated the New Orleans attack
and the German Christmas market attack carried out on December 20, 2024. The reason as to why Jews are going to such lengths? Jews are pitting Christians and Muslims against each other in order to gain control.

The post below, which supports the claim that “ISIS is Jewish”, has over 18K views.  Although it does not explicitly mention the New Orleans attack, it was published a few hours later and clearly is in response.

In the post below, the user claims that Jews were warned to avoid the scene of the attack, therefore it was orchestrated by Jews as a false flag operation.

In the post below, the New Orleans attack is defined as a “Jewciferin false flag”. The expression “Jewciferin” is a combination of Jew and Lucifer, alleging that the Jews are satanists and servants of Lucifer.

Claims that the Perpetrator was Jewish

A creative but far-fetched argument that was widely circulated on social media alleged that the assailant was Jewish and, sometimes, a Mossad agent as well. Some of the posts substantiated the argument by presenting his alleged official documents showing that his alternate names are Jewish names – “Eli” and “Sham”.

The post below has over 188K views!

In the post below, the user reposts a tweet about the New Orleans attack and adds: “Summary of the New Orleans attack: Muslims are the reason, even if the perpetrator is Jewish”. The user accuses Jews of orchestrating and carrying out the attack, while also suggesting that it is part of a larger campaign to blame Muslims for global wrongdoings.

The following post links the New Orleans attack and the Tesla truck bombing to Jews and Israel. The post alleges that the perpetrator, Shams al-Din Jabbar, was previously registered under a “Jewish name” (Eli Shem) before converting to Islam, insinuating Jewish/Mossad involvement in orchestrating the attack. This claim relies on the alternate names listed in alleged official records, suggesting that his actions were part of a larger Israeli conspiracy to justify the United States’ continued presence in the Middle East. By drawing parallels to past allegations, such as an ISIS leader allegedly revealed as a Mossad agent named “Benjamin Ephraim,” the post amplifies the antisemitic trope of Jewish/Israeli deception and manipulation of global events.

Jewish Journalist Jennie Taer Staged Evidence

As part of the media coverage of the attack in New Orleans, a Jewish journalist working for the New York Post, Jennie Taer, visited the perpetrator’s home in Houston, Texas and reported on her findings. Many posts on social media erroneously claimed that she was the only journalist who received permission to visit the house, despite the FBI’s investigation into the matter, which prompted antisemitic users to allege that she was a spy and that the attack in New Orleans was staged by Jews and the Mossad.

In the post below the user attacks Jennie Taer by calling her a “Talmudic tribe member”, using a devil emoji, and repeatedly using the Star of David emoji to reference her religion.  Additionally, the user implies that Jews were likely behind the attack due to Taer’s presence at the perpetrator’s home.

In the following post, the user singles out Jennie Taer and portrays her negatively, accusing her of being an Israeli spy and part of the Hasidic Jewish Chabad movement, which they claim supports child trafficking. The user also promotes the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews control the U.S. by sharing an image of a religious Jew with exaggerated features riding on Uncle Sam, a symbol of the U.S. government. In the corner of the image there is a picture of the “Happy Merchant”, an antisemitic meme, dressed in patriotic U.S. attire.

New Year | A Time for New Decisions