Footage of body bags that appear to be moving is being cited as proof that an airstrike by Israel against a refugee camp in Gaza produced little to no casualties.
Israel’s military confirmed this week that it had launched an attack on Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, in order to take control of a Hamas military stronghold. The attack, which Israel says successfully eliminated a high-ranking Hamas commander, caused dozens of deaths and over 150 injuries.
But the attack is being downplayed by some online, who claim that the body bag footage proves that Palestinians are lying about the fallout from the deadly strike.
In comments across platforms such as X, users claimed that no legitimate footage of bodies had been produced from Jabalia and that there was “significant evidence of props” being used.
Yet the footage being circulated as proof of their claims has nothing to do with Palestine.
The clip, which has repeatedly gone viral since the beginning days of the war, was actually filmed in 2013 in Egypt. The display was nothing more than a protest against the Egyptian government by students with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
As previously noted by BBC fact-checker Shayan Sardarizadeh, the original video can be found on YouTube with an upload date of Oct. 28, 2013.
The clip is just one of countless pieces of media content that have been taken out of context since the recent conflict between Israel and Palestine began.
Another image that shows an individual in a body bag sitting up and texting on a phone is also spreading across social media.
But once again, the image has nothing to do with Gaza. As reported by the fact-checking group Full Fact, the first appearance of the image looks to have come from Facebook in October of last year.
The image was posted by a mother in Thailand who was merely documenting her child’s Halloween costume. The picture was even covered by multiple news websites in Thailand at the time.
The accuracy of both military strikes and death tolls has been a back-and-forth war of information. Israel was inaccurately blamed for a missile hitting a Palestinian hospital, which was initially said to have killed 500. New reporting refutes both Israel’s culpability and that high death toll.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden went so far as to say he didn’t believe the casualty numbers cited by the Gaza Health Ministry.
Additionally, the conflict between Israel and Palestine continues to produce large amounts of misinformation on a daily basis.
In just one example, an Israeli jingle producer last month made a deepfake video of model Bella Hadid recanting her support for Palestine. In remarks to the Daily Dot, the video’s creator defended his actions by stating that he was making Hadid speak the truth in a world full of fake news.
