Shani Louk - Shani Louk Viral Video Truck Twitter Footage (Hamas Woman)

On 7 October 2023, after the Re’im music festival massacre, Shani Nicole Louk (7 February 2001–7 October 2023), a German-Israeli tattoo artist and influencer, went missing. The event came to public attention[1] when a video was widely shared soon after the attack, showing her seemingly unconscious, being paraded in the streets of Gaza by Hamas militants in the back of a pickup truck. Described by security experts and commentators as Hamas’ social media propaganda, it became one of the first viral videos of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. Additional attention was brought to her case after her mother, who subsequently said that she had received information that Louk is alive and in a Gaza hospital, appealed to the German government for help.

She had been counted as one of the eight German nationals taken hostage during the war, according to German authorities. On 29 October 2023, the Israel Defense Forces informed Louk’s mother Ricarda that her daughter’s DNA was identified on a skull fragment at the massacre site in Re’im, suggesting she had already died on 7 October.[2]

Some journalists have linked the spread of the video to the investigations undertaken by the European Commission against Twitter in 2023, for permitting distribution of illegal content.

After the massacre, a video emerged showing Louk, partially clothed and seemingly unconscious, with blood on her hair, being paraded in the streets of Gaza City by Hamas militants in the back of a pickup truck; they were exclaiming “Allahu Akbar”, and were joined in the cheers by the people in the crowd surrounding the vehicle, some of whom spat on Louk.[22][15][23][24] The video went viral becoming one of the first viral videos of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

According to security experts interviewed by A gence France-Presse, the release of the video, along other videos showing dead or captured civilians, has the character of deliberate and sophisticated propaganda aimed to induce feelings of “helplessness, paralysis, and humiliation” in the population, and that viral spread of such materials causes amplification of narratives desirable to Hamas. Despite Hamas being banned on Twitter as a terrorist organization, some of its propaganda videos have circulated there after being reposted from one platform to the other. Discussed by journalists as one such video was the video showing Louk; together with other Hamas-related content being shared, it prompted the European Commmission to warn the owner of Twitter Elon Musk about permitting spread of illegal content and then, on 12 October, to initiate an investigation against Twitter for dissemination of “violent and terrorist content” and other forms of illegal content. In a New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof discussed the video as an example of the causes of trauma and anger experienced within Jewish communities in the aftermath of the attacks. According to commentator Bobby Ghosh, Hamas released propaganda videos quickly, wanting to be the first to score psychological warfare gains; however, the video showing Louk did not demoralize Israeli society; instead, her “treatment at the hands of [her] captors drew widespread revulsion and reprobation, and if anything, strengthened Israeli resolve to exact retribution.”