Fake News as a “weapon” of disinformation on Israel-Palestine

New York Times

The New York Times has published a long article showing the phenomenon of refuting facts and creating confusion by publishing fake news. Specifically, this is happening at the time of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a practice that was also carried out at the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war.

According to RTKlive, social networks have already been bombarded with images, graphics, videos and even communiqués allegedly from the White House.

A video game becomes a Hamas “attack”

The New York Times listed some of the Fake News and began the article by circulating a video purporting to show footage of “a new airstrike in parts of Israel.” But the images were actually from a video game, “Arma 3,” released in 2022. Even footage from that game has been used in the past to misrepresent other conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The video from 2015 is refuted as a product of 2023

A video was shared on social media showing a woman burning herself in flames amid a crowd of people, allegedly showing the torture of an Israeli woman caught at a festival.

“This is the evil face of Hamas jihad terrorists torturing the Israeli girl at the Re’im Nature Festival,” a post on the social network X reads.

The actual content of the video is about the violence that took place in Central America in 2015, not in Israel in 2023. The footage shows CNN reporting on a 16-year-old girl being burned to death in a Guatemalan village, RTKlive reported.

Fake White House announcement

The rebuttals have also reached the White House announcements. An image purportedly released by the White House on October 7 showing $8 billion in aid to Israel. It was even said that Ukraine was already getting competition for aid from the US. In fact, however, the White House had issued no such announcement, which was outwardly very similar to the July announcement on aid to Ukraine, reports the New York Times and was relayed by RTKlive.

A “fabrication” of BBC reporting.

A fake video shared on Telegram and X purported that, according to the BBC report, the group being investigated for the terrorist attacks had bought the weapons provided by NATO to Ukraine.

“Bellingcat: Failure of Ukrainian military offensive and Hamas attack are linked,” the video’s opening text states.

But the BBC never published this report, and the underlying claim is baseless. Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins called the video “100% fake.” Shayan Sardarizadeh, a BBC journalist, also said it was false.

An Orthodox church untouched

Fake news has not spared even religious institutions. An image was posted on the social network X showing Israeli warplanes bombing the Orthodox Church of St. Porphyry, the largest church in Gaza.

Church officials denied the news and said the church was not affected.

“We would like to inform you that the Church of St. Porphyry in Gaza is intact,” they said on Facebook. “The circulating news about its violation is false.”

CNN did not organize a report or attack

CNN on Monday released live footage of a correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and her colleagues taking cover as rockets were fired near the border between Israel and Gaza. A doctored version of the report was widely circulated online, with fake audio saying a control room had given instructions to the occupation, suggesting the report was staged in some way.

“The audio in the posted and shared video on X is fake, inaccurate and irresponsibly misrepresents the reality of the moment that was broadcast live on CNN,” a network spokesperson said, urging viewers to watch the real footage on a trusted platform.

False report about the evacuation of the US embassy.

False reports circulated on the Internet Wednesday claiming that the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon was being evacuated, prompting officials to publicly deny the claim.

The embassy responded Wednesday afternoon with a statement that the U.S. Embassy in Beirut had not been evacuated and was open and functioning normally. Reports to the contrary are false.

Embassy officials have advised American citizens in the region to exercise caution and avoid travel to the Lebanese-Israeli border, where the Israeli military and the Hezbollah group have opened fire in recent days. Israel briefly occupied Lebanon in 2006 after Hezbollah attackers crossed the border and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, and the border group’s recent firefight has raised fears of a larger regional conflict, RTKlive reported.