BENI, Congo (AP) — The memories come flooding back whenever Vianney Kambale Kombi hears the word Ebola.
He remembers the pain and fear in his community in the eastern Congo city of Beni during the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak, history's second-biggest with more than 3,400 reported cases and over 2,200 deaths. It was stopped with the aid of vaccines.
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A general view in Beni, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Bienfait Wanzire, an Ebola survivor, sits by his house in Beni, Congo, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Vianney Kambale Kombi, an Ebola survivor, poses for a photo in Beni, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Esperance Masinda, an Ebola survivor, poses for a photo at her home in Beni, Congo, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Dr. Babah Mutuza Lusungu, right, a doctor at "Dieu Est Grand" Medical Center, attends to a woman in his office in Beni, Congo, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Kombi also remembers the broad skepticism over the disease, attacks on health workers and inaction from patients that he blames for the speed in which the disease spread.
“We thought it was witchcraft,” said Kombi. “The community had not accepted that this disease existed and it had not accepted that we could recover from it.”
In Beni, a bustling commercial hub near the borders with Uganda and Rwanda, some fear that a repeat of mistakes made during Congo's past outbreaks and the lack of an approved vaccine this time around might make the response to the latest outbreak more challenging.
A total of 515 infections have been confirmed in the current outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, a type of Ebola virus, including 91 deaths and 12 recoveries.
Kombi recalled how he contracted the virus after being exposed to others who had it. He said they had little information about the disease at the time, and that while many thought it was witchcraft, others described it as a “Western conspiracy for funding reasons.”
“The community had not accepted that we could recover from this disease, that’s why reintegrating into the community at first was a bit difficult,” he said.
“When a pandemic hits here in Congo, we initially think it’s a political issue,” said Bienfait Wanzire, who also recovered after contracting Ebola during the 2018 outbreak.
“At first, we thought it was a spiritual illness,” he said. “Then because there were election campaigns, we believed it was political.”
Dr. Babah Mutuza Lusungu, a physician at “Dieu Est Grand” Medical Center in Beni, remembered losing his uncle and two colleagues even as he tried to convince people the outbreak was real.
“There was very strong resistance,” said Lusungu. “And so there was a climate of mistrust that took place between the population, the authorities, the partners too, right, and the health workers.”
Youths at the time were not directly involved in response efforts, he said, urging local authorities to work more closely with youth leaders to enlighten people about the disease.
“If we wait until they have so many declared cases to start making an effective response, we will have totally missed the target,” he said.
Esperance Masinda, who was working for the U.N. children’s agency in Beni during the 2018 outbreak, said it was particularly difficult caring for children who had lost their parents to Ebola.
She contracted the disease while looking after her husband who was working as a medical doctor. Although they both later recovered, the vaccine that helped save them distanced them from family and neighbors.
“When we were in the community, we were told that you’re not going to make it even five years, you’re going to die with that medication that you took there,” Masinda said.
“And today, when they see us, these people no longer stigmatize us,” she said. “We are all humans, even though we have been victims of Ebola, all of us are humans.”
A general view in Beni, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Bienfait Wanzire, an Ebola survivor, sits by his house in Beni, Congo, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Vianney Kambale Kombi, an Ebola survivor, poses for a photo in Beni, Congo, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Esperance Masinda, an Ebola survivor, poses for a photo at her home in Beni, Congo, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
Dr. Babah Mutuza Lusungu, right, a doctor at "Dieu Est Grand" Medical Center, attends to a woman in his office in Beni, Congo, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Kitsa Musayi Sebastien)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — For more than two years, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza and Lebanon have lived in dread of Avichay Adraee’s next social media post.
Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesman has been the animated face of its campaigns and the main source of warnings ahead of strikes and major offensives. That has made him one of the most recognizable Israelis in the Arab world and a focus of fury as well as some fascination.
In social media videos shared to his 2.5 million followers across platforms, the colonel appears in military fatigues, gesticulating as he delivers official statements and mocks Israel’s enemies, often using satire or pop culture references, all in fluent Arabic.
In the wars sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, his social media accounts have carried warnings for civilians to leave — sometimes at a moment's notice — areas shaded in red on maps of Gaza and Lebanon. Millions have paid heed, with hundreds of thousands seeking refuge in squalid tent camps.
Adraee, who is retiring this year, takes pride in his work. Asked to respond to the fact that many associate him with death and displacement, he said he has helped Arabs to better understand Israel's military operations.
“Because of these evacuation orders, many millions were saved,” he told The Associated Press. “There's no other army in the world that acts this way.”
Israel’s offensive in Gaza killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and displaced most of the population of some 2 million, often multiple times, before a fragile ceasefire took hold in October. Its latest war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon has killed some 3,500 people and displaced over 1.2 million.
Both campaigns have drawn allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which Israel has adamantly denied, often through spokespeople like Adraee.
The grim warnings also have made him something of a celebrity. In Lebanon, a look-alike delivery driver posts satirical videos and pranks unsuspecting residents, showing the fear Adraee inspires.
“Avichay Adraee is the face of evil, to me and to the people of Gaza,” said Ayman Ahmad, a resident of Khan Younis in southern Gaza who has been displaced twice during the war. Few people in Gaza had heard of Adraee before the war, he said, but now everyone closely monitors his social media accounts.
“Once we see a new post from him, we know that a disaster is about to happen,” he said.
Adraee, 43, grew up in the mixed Jewish and Arab city of Haifa in northern Israel.
His father's family is part of the Jewish community that lived in the area for generations before Israel's establishment in 1948. His mother's family came to Israel from Iraq, among hundreds of thousands of Jews from centuries-old communities across the Middle East who emigrated to Israel to escape violence and persecution.
Adraee said he loved watching Egyptian soap operas on Israeli television as a kid and that studying Arabic was “love at first sight.” He picked up some Arabic at home before studying the language in school and during a stint in military intelligence.
“My ability to speak and absorb Arabic is connected to my roots,” he said. “My grandmother and father were very proud when they saw me on TV speaking in Arabic.”
Adraee became the military’s first Arabic-language spokesperson in 2005, doing interviews with TV outlets, including regular appearances on the increasingly influential Al Jazeera.
He said 2011 marked a turning point with the rise of social media, which was used to great effect during the Arab Spring uprisings that year.
“People know me, we’ve been through so many wars,” he said. “But the revolution of social networks in 2011 allowed us to lean on the persona of Avichay.”
Adraee wants his videos to go viral, leaning on the casual nature of social media to get his message across.
The military's claim to have found Hamas infrastructure under a luxury hotel in Gaza made little impact, but Adraee said his satirical video of a Hamas leader leaving a Trip Advisor review for the tunnels was widely shared. He has sent birthday messages to singers and holiday greetings to Arab influencers, even exchanging public messages with Lebanese journalists who work for Hezbollah-linked outlets.
“We want people to be exposed to the really important and serious messages, the information we’re trying to convince them of, but if you want them to remember you, you have to be more creative,” he said, adding that social media allowed him to “talk directly to the people, above the heads of the government.”
Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East studies at the London School of Economics who was born in Lebanon, said Adraee's posts are “dreaded and feared because they really carry life and death implications for hundreds of thousands of people.”
Still, “you have some people basically who are fascinated by his personality because he’s now almost an official influencer for Israel,” he said, adding that Israel’s military has spokespeople in several languages, but only Adraee is famous enough to be known by his first name.
Gerges said it's part of a wider trend in which official spokespeople try to make their messages go viral.
The Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida was widely known for delivering fiery statements, sometimes cut with footage of attacks or Israeli hostages, before he was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Hamas and Hezbollah have released videos showing their attacks, cut with music and graphics.
Supporters of Iran's government have released AI-generated music videos with Lego characters mocking U.S. President Donald Trump. The White House has released its own videos celebrating strikes on Iran, featuring video game screenshots and movie clips.
It's not unusual for military spokespeople to have adversarial, if professional, relations with reporters. But Adraee has been accused of justifying the killing of some journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says there is a “repeated pattern” in which Adraee “publicly labels Palestinian and Lebanese journalists as militants or terrorists — often without presenting verifiable evidence — before or after they are killed in Israeli strikes.”
After a strike in March killed three journalists in Lebanon, Adraee’s account published a photo of one of them, Ali Shoeib, in military fatigues. The image was later determined to be computer generated.
Adraee said it was a mistake not to label the photo as “illustrative,” but insisted Shoeib was a known Hezbollah operative who spied on Israeli positions while working as a reporter for a Hezbollah-linked outlet. Adraee presented no evidence he was involved in fighting. Israel says it does not target journalists.
At least 207 journalists have been killed in Gaza and 16 in Lebanon since 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
After 20 years in the role, Adraee is retiring and will be replaced by Lt. Col. Ella Waweya, the military’s highest-ranking Muslim woman.
Last month, Adraee received one of the strangest messages of his long career.
A teenager in a Beirut suburb reached out on Instagram and told Adraee that her school was hiding weapons. Israel regularly bombs buildings it says are used by militants, so the message prompted panic, vehement denials by school officials and a search by the Lebanese military, which turned up nothing.
It was later revealed the girl was playing a joke with a friend and likely wanted to avoid going to class.
Adraee chalked up the whole situation as a win.
“The fact that the (Israeli military) spokesperson is someone you can write to on Instagram, that’s the whole story,” he said.
Associated Press writer Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo contributed.
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military’s Arabic language spokesman, stands beside weapons the army says were seized from Hezbollah in Lebanon, at an army base in northern Israel, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
