Misinformation and disinformation involving the distribution of false, inaccurate or otherwise misleading information has been a prominent feature of the Gaza war. There have been allegations of bias in media coverage of the Gaza war, including social media as well as news media. Much of the content has been viral in nature, spreading online with tens of millions of posts in circulation on social media. A variety of sources, including government officials, media outlets, and social media influencers across different countries, have contributed to the spread of these inaccuracies and falsehoods.
The New York Times described the start of the Gaza war as releasing a "deluge of online propaganda and disinformation" that was "larger than anything seen before". It described the conflict as "fast becoming a world war online." According to the NYT, Russia, China, Iran and its proxies used state media and covert influence campaigns on social media networks to support Hamas, undermine Israel, criticize the United States and cause unrest. James Rubin of the U.S. State Department's Global Engagement Center called coverage of the conflict as being swept up in "an undeclared information war with authoritarian countries".
During the conflict, the Israeli government and Israeli cyber companies have deployed artificial intelligence (AI) tools and bot farms to spread disinformation and graphic, emotionally charged and false propaganda to dehumanize Palestinians, sow division among supporters of Palestine, and exert pressure on politicians to support Israel's actions. The Intercept reported that: "At the center of Israel’s information warfare campaign is a tactical mission to dehumanize Palestinians and to flood the public discourse with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations." One such covert campaign was commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. The ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation, and used political marketing firm Stoic based in Tel Aviv to carry it out, according officials and documents reviewed by the New York Times. The campaign was started after the October 7 attacks, and remained active on X (formerly Twitter) at the time of the New York Times report in June 2024. At the peak of the campaign it used hundreds of fake accounts posing as Americans on X, Facebook and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments, focusing on U.S. lawmakers, particularly those who are Black and from the Democratic Party, including Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader from New York, and Raphael Warnock, Senator from Georgia. ChatGPT was deployed to generate many of the posts. The campaign also involved the creation of three fake English-language news sites featuring pro-Israel articles. In November 2024, a report by a United Nations (UN) committee noted that Western social media companies disproportionately removed content showing solidarity with the Palestinian people relative to content promoting violence against Palestinians.
On 7 October attack
On 7 October 2023, deputy head of Hamas's political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri (based in Lebanon), claimed the Qassam Brigades had "captured senior officers from the occupation army" in the October 7 attacks. A rumour circulated on social media that one of these officers was Major General Nimrod Aloni, the commander of the Israeli Depth Corps, based on a photograph of a man who resembled him being detained by unidentified armed men. A Persian language post by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) quoted a post about his capture from Tasnim News Agency and wrote "Tasnim: Distributors of fake news of IRGC" without either denying or confirming the capture of Aloni. Aloni was subsequently seen on 8 October attending a meeting of top Israeli military officials.
An Israeli boy and his sisters killed during Hamas's attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October have been falsely accused of being "crisis actors".
A photo shared by Israel showing the charred corpse of a baby was claimed by many on social media to have been AI-generated, based on AI detector "AI or Not". The claim was repeated by Al Jazeera Arabic. The company behind "AI or Not" later said that the result was a false positive caused by the image's compression and blurred name tag; several experts who looked at the photo found it to be genuine. Other social media users claimed, based on a 4chan post, that the image had been altered from a similar photo of a dog, though researcher Tina Nikoukhah found that it was actually the dog picture which has been likely "falsified using generative methods".
The community volunteer paramedic and rescue group ZAKA began collecting bodies immediately after the Hamas attacks, while the IDF avoided assigning soldiers from Home Front Command who have been trained to carefully retrieve and document human remains in post-terrorism situations. Home Front Command soldiers and volunteers from other organizations accused ZAKA volunteers of spreading horror stories of atrocities that did not happen for self-promotion as well as "releasing sensitive and graphic photos to shock people into donating" and other unprofessional behavior. The Times of Israel reported that "A volunteer from a different organization told Haaretz that ZAKA also double-wrapped bodies in its own bags after they had already been placed in IDF or other organizations’ bags, creating a mess at headquarters when bodies were placed in the wrong sections." Haaretz reported this double-bagging was done for self-promotion purposes: "At the attack scenes, the question was not only what to photograph but also what exactly to show. In some cases, volunteers from Zaka were seen wrapping bodies already wrapped in IDF bags. The new bag prominently displayed the Zaka logo."
Allegations of beheading
In the aftermath of the initial Hamas assault, witnesses from the Israeli soldiers, the Israeli Forces, and the first responder Israeli organization ZAKA said on French Israeli TV channel i24news that they had seen the bodies of beheaded infants at the site of the Kfar Aza massacre. During US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Israel, he said he was shown photos of the massacre by Hamas of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and specifically that he saw beheaded IDF soldiers. U.S. President Joe Biden separately said that he had seen photographic evidence of terrorists beheading children, but the White House later clarified that Biden was alluding to news reports of beheadings, which have not contained or referred to photographic evidence. NBC News called reports of "40 beheaded babies" unverified allegations, adding that they appeared "to have originated from Israeli soldiers and people affiliated with the Israel Defense Force". They also added that "an Israeli official told CNN the government had not confirmed claims of the beheadings". The allegation mainly "stemmed from a viral Israeli news broadcast clip" and the main X / Twitter accounts propagating the claims were i24NEWS and Israel's official account, even though Israeli Defense spokesperson Doron Spielman told NBC News that he could not confirm i24NEWS's report. By 12 October, CNN had extensively reviewed online media content to verify Hamas-related atrocities but found no evidence to support claims of decapitated children. By the end of November, I24 had edited its article, removing the claim about 40 babies. In December 2023, Haaretz published the results of a comprehensive investigation into the violence of the 7 October attacks. The conclusion was that while Hamas had committed real "atrocities" that day, some of the extreme acts attributed to the group never happened and were fueling denial of the October 7 attacks. Although Hamas had desecrated or dismembered the bodies of some Israelis, these belonged for the most part to fallen soldiers, the article said. An April 2024 Le Monde investigation concluded that it was "a rumor born organically, out of a mixture of emotion, confusion and macabre exaggeration. Israel has done nothing to fight it and has more often tried to instrumentalize it than deny it, fueling accusations of media manipulation." Le Monde also noted that the myth was used by antisemitic misinformation influencers such as Jackson Hinkle to falsely infer that all Israeli claims about 7 October were false.
Allegations of sexual violence
The AP reported that two ZAKA volunteers made false statements about sexual violence and rape on 7 October. Chaim Otmazgin, a ZAKA commander, claimed he found a raped woman due to her pants having been pulled down below her waist. He showed photos to the AP as part of his testimony. However, it was found out later that the body was lying as it was due to being dragged around by Israeli soldiers to check if it was booby-trapped. Otmazgin said he publicly corrected himself after learning what had happened.
Members of ZAKA including Otmazgin and Simcha Greiniman claimed to have photos depicting genital mutilation, including nails and knives inserted into the groin and genitals. These were shared with the UN's Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten's fact-finding mission, as well as NBC News. Both concluded these claims could not be verified based on the provided photos. However Patten's report concludes that even though the exact scope of sexual violence can not be determined, at least five rapes occurred on 7 October.
Regarding claims that linked Palestinian militants to sexual assaults on 7 October, The Times has remarked that investigations have been hampered by "false and misleading information" spread by "senior [Israeli] political figures and government-linked civil activists". A UN report on these allegations has stated that Israeli authorities have been unable to produce the evidence politicians said existed.
Pregnant woman with her foetus claim Yossi Landau, another ZAKA volunteer, claimed he found a pregnant woman killed with a fetus removed from her womb. This was also proven to be false. Landau offered to show Al Jazeera journalists images of the scene, but didn't have images which would identify the scene he described.
Shortly after 7 October, Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert from the Davis Institute for International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, former Israeli government lawyer, former member of the military spokesperson's unit and close associate of Prime Minister Netanyahu's, established the "Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children", which aimed to give voice to the victims and their families. In June 2024, The Times reported that Elkayam-Levy spread a "debunked story" about a "pregnant woman and her slaughtered foetus", while also circulating "photographs of murdered female soldiers that turned out to be images of Kurdish fighters in Syria." The Times added: "Elkayam-Levy has nonetheless remained the most prominent public voice on the sexual violence of October 7, winning the country’s highest civilian honour, the Israel Prize, in April."
Dead baby in oven claim
In a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition on 28 October, Eli Beer, founder of Israeli volunteer-based emergency medical services group United Hatzalah, claimed that Hamas had burned a baby alive in an oven. He attributed the claim to a United Hatzalah volunteer; one of them, Asher Moskowitz, also publicly made the claim. It was repeated by journalist Dovid Efune, commentator John Podhoretz and others, in tweets seen over 10 million times. Israeli journalists and police found no evidence for the claim, and a representative of ZAKA, a first responder organization, said the claim was "false".
"False flag" conspiracy theories