As the days have passed since the attack by the radical Islamic group Hamas on Israel — which left some 1,200 people dead in that country according to the most recent reports — the spread of false and misleading information about the conflict and the victims has also intensified, including more than 1,123 people who have been killed by the Israeli response in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Below we debunk some of those false publications.
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🟥 The U.S. Embassy in Lebanon has not been evacuated
This Wednesday circulated on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, a message that assured that the US embassy in Lebanon was being evacuated and that US citizens were recommended to leave the country, something that was denied by the embassy itself hours later. "The U.S. Embassy in Beirut has not been evacuated and is open and functioning normally. Reports to the contrary are false. For more information and travel advisories, please visit our embassy's website," reads the message the U.S. delegation posted on X (formerly known as Twitter).
The war sparked by the Hamas attack also raised tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon's most powerful Shiite militant group, an ally of Hamas and also backed by Iran.
After Israel began its war response in Gaza, Hezbollah reacted by firing missiles at Israeli targets in an act of "solidarity" with the Palestinians, according to the group. In recent days both sides have exchanged fire at border points. At least six people have been killed, including three Hezbollah militants and an Israeli army general, NBC News, sister network of Noticias Telemundo, reported.
However, these tensions have not led to the closure of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon or an express call for U.S. citizens to leave the country.
In an updated statement on Monday, the embassy recommended "caution" to Americans in the region and asked them to "avoid traveling to the border area between Lebanon and Israel," as well as "avoid demonstrations and exercise caution if you are near large gatherings or protests" on Lebanese soil.
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🟥 Alleged Israeli babies in cages
This weekend, following the attack on Israel, a viral video circulated on TikTok showing several children locked in cages. Some social media users claim that they are "Israeli children who were kidnapped" by Hamas. However, there is no evidence that this is the case and several elements of the video show that it was posted on the internet months before the massacre.
The video, which shows sensitive scenes, is accompanied by audio in which a person is heard laughing, but offers no context. However, various organizations of fact-checkers have been responsible for evidence that the video is not current.
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Danish fact-checking site TjekDet found that the audio accompanying the video, in which a man is heard laughing, is not original and corresponds to popular audio used in different humorous videos by Arabic-speaking TikTok users.
Separately, Spanish verification site Maldita spoke to Mado Tarraf, a professor at the Arab Academy who teaches Arabic courses in the Spanish capital. After listening to the video, Tarraf explained that the voice in the recording has no Palestinian accent and speaks in "khaleeji" dialect typical of the Persian Gulf area, an area where neither Gaza nor Israel are.
According to Tarraf's translation to the Maldita site, the person laughing in the video repeats that "they have misbehaved with him."
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Both fact-checking organizations managed to determine that the same video was also posted on YouTube in November 2020, nearly two years before Hamas' attack this weekend.
Although it is not clear where the video was recorded, in the footage you can see that the cages where the children are are not locked with padlocks.
🟥 Fake attack scenes correspond to a video game
After the Israeli government declared war on Hamas over the bloody attack on Saturday, October 7, dozens of videos and photographs have circulated on social networks claiming to show alleged scenes of Hamas bombing in parts of Israel. But the shots are fake and actually correspond to scenes from a video game called Arma, produced by the Czech animation studio Bohemia Interactive, as confirmed by the company itself on its website.
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In a statement, the studio warned that the videos circulating "were originally taken from the Arma 3 game and falsely used as images of real-life conflicts, primarily from the current war in Ukraine or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The developer took advantage of the statement to offer some clues to users on how to distinguish video game shots from real-life images. Among them are:
The fake videos are usually of low quality, often correspond to scenes in the dark or at night, do not show people in motion, show unrealistic equipment, uniforms or vehicles and the effects of explosions where smoke, fire and dust are seen are unnatural, explained Bohemia Interactive.
A publication on the social network X used shots of the video game Weapon 3 to ensure that it is a new bombing of Hamas in Israel.
🟥 A false BBC report
A video has also circulated on social networks attributing a fake news story to the British news site BBC News, according to which Ukraine had sold weapons provided by NATO to the Palestinian group Hamas.
According to the fake news, the Dutch research site Bellingcat would have discovered the alleged sale of weapons.
The investigative journalism organization Bellingcat, which has worked with media outlets around the world on complex investigations, denied the report.
"We have not reached such conclusions nor have we made such claims. We would like to emphasize that this is an invention and should be treated accordingly," the X social networking site noted.
Bellingcat founder Elliot Higins also claimed the video is fake. "It is unclear whether this is a Russian government disinformation campaign or a grassroots effort, but (the video) is 100% fake," he wrote.