Israel-Hamas war fuels flood of misinformation on social media: Here are the facts

In the days since Hamas militants stormed into Israel early Oct. 7, a flood of videos and photos purporting to show the conflict have filled social media, making it difficult for onlookers from around the world to sort fact from fiction.

While plenty of real imagery and accounts of the ensuing carnage have emerged, they have been intermingled with users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

Among the fabrications, users have shared false claims that a top Israeli commander had been kidnapped, circulated a false video imitating a BBC News report, and pushed old and unrelated clips of Russian President Vladimir Putin with inaccurate English captions.

Here is a closer look at the misinformation spreading online — and the facts.

READ MORE: Gaza border crossing opens to deliver trickle of desperately needed aid

CLAIM: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to intervene in the latest Israel-Hamas war.

THE FACTS: The conservative Muslim president has said no such thing. A social media post he wrote recently about the ongoing conflict has been misquoted.

Social media users are sharing a quote they say is from Erdogan, in which the long serving leader warns his country will take decisive steps to end the conflict if the destruction of Hamas-controlled Gaza continues.

"Turkish President Erdogan has THREATENED to intervene in the Israeli war on Gaza: ‘I call on all humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented brutality in the Gaza Strip. If not, we will do it’," wrote one user on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in a post that has been liked or shared more than 105,000 times.

But the posts are misquoting a comment Erdogan posted Oct. 17 on his personal account on X about the deadly conflict.

In the message, which was written in Turkish, the president did "invite all humanity" to help stop the "unprecedented brutality in Gaza," as the posts claim.

But he doesn’t write "If not, we will do it" or other threatening phrases suggesting a direct military intervention by Turkey, according to native Turkish speakers and other experts who reviewed Erdogan’s social media posts for The Associated Press.

"President Erdogan did not threaten to intervene in the conflict," Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank, wrote in an email. "He was speaking generally about getting the world to put pressure on Israel to stop its military campaign."

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a political science professor at Northwestern University who specializes in the Middle East, added that she hasn’t seen any indication that Erdogan has made such a threat elsewhere.

Turkish government spokespersons didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment, but Erdogan posted a lengthier statement on his personal account on X, also written in Turkish, in which he denounced Israel’s attacks on Gaza, criticized Western nations and media outlets and called for the international community to push for a ceasefire.

The official, English-language account for the Turkish president’s office echoed that sentiment in a post about a call between Erdogan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.

"Underscoring that forcing the Palestinians in Gaza to migrate from their homeland is unacceptable, President Erdoğan stressed that Türkiye will continue to make every effort in order for peace to be ensured and for humanitarian aid as well as healthcare services to be immediately delivered to Gaza," the office wrote.

CLAIM: The Israeli military confirmed it bombed a hospital in Gaza in a social media post written in Arabic.

THE FACTS: A screenshot circulating online shows a Facebook post from an account posing as the Israeli military. No such post exists on the military’s actual social media pages and its top Arabic-speaking spokesperson confirmed his office has issued no such statement.

In the wake of the Oct. 17 deadly blast at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, social media users shared the screenshot, claiming it is from a member of the Israeli military’s Arabic-speaking media relations team.

The user’s profile image bears the blue-and-white emblem of the spokesperson’s office, which features radio waves atop the Israeli military’s traditional symbol of an olive branch-wrapped sword.

The post, written in Arabic, suggests the Jewish nation said it bombed the hospital because the Gaza City medical facility lacked supplies and staff.

"Israeli official facebook post: ‘Due to the lack of medical equipment and the lack of medical staff, it was decided to bomb the Baptist Hospital in Gaza and give them euthanasia’," wrote one user on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in a post translating the screenshot. Similar posts were also widely shared on TikTok and other social media platforms.

But the purported statement wasn’t penned by the Israeli military’s press office, its top Arabic-speaking spokesperson confirmed this week.

"Just to clarify: I did not issue any statement or comment regarding the Baptist Hospital in Gaza," wrote Avichay Adraee, head of the Arab media branch of the Israeli military’s Spokesperson’s Unit, in a post on X from Oct. 17, when the blast occurred. "All the news circulating in my name comes from the Hamas media outlets and is completely false."

The office on Thursday confirmed the post did not come from the military’s official Arabic page, saying in an emailed statement: "The IDF has made it very clear that there was no IDF strike on the hospital."

What’s more, the Israeli military’s press office doesn’t use its own logo on its actual social media accounts, unlike the fake account.

The unit’s separate Facebook pages in English and Hebrew, as well as its X account written in Farsi, for example, all use the military’s main symbol. That gold-colored emblem features the olive branch-wrapped sword with the Star of David in the background.

Meanwhile Adraee’s social media accounts, which are the main channel for the Israeli military’s messages in Arabic, feature his profile picture and a maroonlogo consisting of five swords with flames in the background as its cover photo.

The original fake account and post on Facebook also appear to have been deleted as of Oct. 19. Spokespersons for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, didn’t reply to an email seeking comment.

There have been conflicting claims of who was responsible for the hospital blast. Officials in Gaza quickly blamed an Israeli airstrike.

Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a missile misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza that has dismissed that claim.

The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.

— Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

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CLAIM: A video shows Qatar’s emir threatening to cut off the world’s natural gas supply if Israel doesn’t stop bombing Gaza.

THE FACTS: Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, says no such thing in the widely circulating clip, which is more than six years old. A spokesperson for the Qatari government also confirmed that neither the emir nor any other government official has threatened to cut off exports in response to the conflict.

Many online are sharing the video of the Persian Gulf nation’s ruler, falsely claiming it shows him saying in Arabic that he’s willing to halt the distribution of its gas reserves to achieve his desired end to the latest Israel-Hamas war.

"BREAKING: Qatar is threatening to create a global gas shortage in support of Palestine," wrote one user who posted the video on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "If the bombing of Gaza doesn’t stop, we will stop gas supply of the world."

But Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani says nothing of the sort in the video. The 7-second clip is actually a tiny snippet from his opening speech at the Doha Forum in 2017.

Marc Owen Jones, a professor of Middle East studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Doha, the capital of Qatar, confirmed that the emir touches briefly on Palestine in the widely shared clip, but doesn’t make any threats related to the current conflict.

Instead the emir, in his remarks, urged the international community to take more steps to address the region’s refugee crisis, news outlets reported at the time.

"The exact translation is: ‘The issue of Palestine, I’ll begin by saying it’s a case of a people uprooted from their lands, and displaced from their nation’," Jones wrote in an email.

Qatar’s government on Oct. 16 confirmed the clip dates to 2017 and is being misrepresented.

"This is yet another case of an online disinformation against Qatar – such a statement has never been made and never would be," wrote the country’s International Media Office in an email. "Qatar does not politicize its LNG supplies or any economic investment."

Qatar is one of the world’s top natural gas producers. It controlled the third largest natural gas reserves and was the second largest exporter of liquified natural gas, or LNG, in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

What’s more, the country has been working in recent years to use its sizable resources to build ties with other nations, not antagonize them, according to experts.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, a Boston-based company that tracks gas prices nationwide, pointed to a deal Qatar’s state energy company just announced to supply French energy company TotalEnergies with 3.5 million tons of natural gas annually for the next 27 years.

"Qatar has been securing investment since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed Europe to find new sources of natural gas and quickly," he wrote in an email. "They’re making deals left and right."

— Philip Marcelo.

___ CLAIM: A video shows a BBC News report confirming Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas.

THE FACTS: The widely shared video clip is fabricated, officials with the BBC and Bellingcat, an investigative news website that is cited in the video as the source, confirm.

The clip, which includes the BBC’s distinctive block-text logo, purports to show a story from the outlet about a recent report from Bellingcat on Ukraine providing arms to Hamas.

"Bellingcat: Ukrainian military offensive failure and HAMAS attack linked," reads the text over the video, which has more than 2,500 comments and 110,000 views on the messaging service Telegram. "The Palestinians purchased firearms, ammunition, drones and other weapons."

But neither the BBC nor Bellingcat has reported any evidence to support the notion that Ukraine funneled arms to Hamas.

"We’ve reached no such conclusions or made any such claims," Bellingcat wrote Oct. 10 in a post on X that included screengrabs of the fake report. "We’d like to stress that this is a fabrication and should be treated accordingly."

Eliot Higgins, the Amsterdam-based organization’s founder, noted in a separate post on X that the claims have been amplified by Russian social media users.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a New York University professor briefly shown near the end of the video, also disputed the clip’s suggestion that he’s said the U.S. might leave NATO if the arms claims prove true.

"Entirely fake. Never said that," the distinguished professor of risk engineering wrote in an email.

Spokespersons for the BBC didn’t respond to emails seeking comment, but Shayan Sardarizadeh, a reporter with the organization’s fact checking unit, confirmed in a post on X that the video is not real.

Ukrainian officials have similarly dismissed the notion that its country’s arms have somehow found their way to Hamas. The country’s military intelligence agency, in an Oct. 9 post on its official Facebook page, accused Russia of plotting a disinformation campaign around these claims.

Experts say there is also no evidence of Hamas making any claims about receiving arms from Ukraine, nor would it make sense for Kyiv to provide them.

"I see no reason Ukraine would do this," said Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Starting with the fact that Kiev is in the business of obtaining weapons and not giving them away."

— Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo in New York and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed this report.

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CLAIM: Video of a young actor being filmed lying in a pool of fake blood shows propaganda being created for use in the Israel-Hamas war.

THE FACTS: The video is behind-the-scenes footage from the making of "Empty Place," a short film focused on the story of Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian who was arrested at age 13 in 2015 in relation to the stabbing of two Israelis.

Social media users on both sides of the latest Israel-Hamas war are sharing the video, each falsely alleging that it’s proof the other group is creating propaganda about their own.

In the clip, a young actor lies on a sidewalk covered in fake blood, his right leg bent backward, as a film crew works around him. Other actors mill about dressed as soldiers and in garb worn by many Orthodox Jewish men.

"See how Israelis are making fake videos saying that Palestine Freedom Fighters killed children," reads one tweet that had received more than 5,600 likes and more than 4,400 shares as of Oct. 11.

An Instagram post claimed the opposite, stating: "These terrorists are dressing up as JEWISH soldiers to create fake videos about Israeli soldiers! Faking Propaganda!"

But neither allegation is correct. The video shows footage from the making of the 2022 short film directed by Awni Eshtaiwe, a filmmaker based in the West Bank. The scene being shot begins about 1 minute and 10 seconds into the approximately 2 minute film.

Mohamad Awawdeh, a cinematographer listed in the film’s credits as a camera assistant, posted the behind-the-scenes footage to TikTok in April 2022, around the time the film was released. A caption on the post, written in Arabic, explains that the scene being filmed in the video shows Manasra being attacked. Awawdeh posted the same footage to Instagram on June 30.

— Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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CLAIM: Nimrod Aloni, a top general in the Israeli army, was captured by Hamas militants during a deadly incursion Oct. 7 into southern Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip.

THE FACTS: There’s no truth to this claim, a spokesperson for the Israeli military confirmed. Aloni was seen Oct. 8 at a meeting of top Israeli military officials.

The erroneous claim that Aloni was one of the hostages taken by Hamas spread widely online after the militant group attacked Israel.

"Palestinian resistance fighters capture Israeli commander Nimrod Aloni along with dozens of other Israeli soldiers as the resistance fighters attacked neighbouring occupied towns and Israeli check posts near Gaza," stated one Instagram post that received more than 43,000 likes.

But Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief military spokesman, told reporters Oct. 7 that claims Aloni was captured are "not true."

Aloni clearly appears 10 seconds into a video posted to the Israeli military’s official YouTube channel of top officials discussing the war on Oct. 8. The date can be seen on a slide in the background. The military also published online four images from the meeting. The one on the lower right shows Aloni on the far right.

The Israeli army confirmed to The Associated Press that Aloni is the man in the video and image.

— Melissa Goldin.

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CLAIM: A video shows Hamas fighters parachuting onto a sports field before attacking Israeli citizens during the group’s surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

THE FACTS: While Hamas did employ paragliders to get some fighters across the border between Gaza and southern Israel, the footage of the sports field shows parachute jumpers in Cairo, Egypt, and has been online since at least September.

The clip shows people strapped to multi-colored parachutes descending onto a crowded sports field complex filled with children and families, many in red sports jerseys.

"Hamas paraglided amongst Israeli citizens and proceeded to massacre them," text on the video clip reads. One post of the misleading footage on TikTok was viewed more than 38,000 times.

But this footage has been online since at least Sept. 27, when it was posted to TikTok with the location tag "Egypt."

Details of the video also point to Egypt as the location — a person is wearing a blue shirt that reads "El Nasr SC" on the back, the name of a sporting club in northeastern Cairo.

Images of the club on Google Maps match the scene of the video — as well as several other clips of the event from the same TikTok user — with both showing a bright blue fence around a sporting ground next to a paved area with green and blue plastic seats.

The parachuters land on a larger soccer pitch surrounded by tall field lights. The field matches photos posted to the club’s Facebook page and footage of its soccer team’s matches, including a distinctive red building with a blue fence on top at one end that can be seen in the TikTok clip at around 19 seconds.

Other TikTok users shared footage of a parachuting similar scene around the same time, with "El Nasr" in the caption in Arabic.

The crowd of onlookers in the clip circulating online also doesn’t seem distressed by the arrival of the parachuters, as one might expect if they were an invading force. In fact, many women and children are seen running towards them, phones in hand taking videos and photos of the aerial display.

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CLAIM: Two videos show Russian President Vladimir Putin warning the U.S. to "stay away" from the latest Israel-Hamas war.

THE FACTS: Bothvideos circulating online are months-old clips of Putin speaking about the Russia-Ukraine war, not the conflict in the Middle East, which have been miscaptioned in English.

Both videos show Putin speaking in Russian, with false English captions saying he was warning the U.S. to refrain from helping the Jewish state.

"America wants to Destroy israel as we destroy ukraine In past," the captions on one video state. "I am warning America. Russia will help palestine and america can do nothing." One TikTok post that shared the clip had received approximately 11,600 views as of Oct. 9.

A caption on another video of Putin, filmed in a different location, similarly reads: "I am warning america to stay Away from palestine israel war."

But the two clips long predate the latest Israel-Hamas war and make no mention of Israel at all.

The first shows Putin at a meeting of Russia’s Human Rights Council in December 2022, where, amid discussions about the war in Ukraine, he responded to a question about the country’s potential use of nuclear weapons, as the AP reported at the time. The footage was featured by multiple other newsoutlets with similar translations.

In the second, Putin is speaking at a February 2023 event marking the 80th anniversary of the World War II Soviet victory over Nazi German forces in the battle of Stalingrad. In his remarks, he compared this threat to Germany’s then-recent decision to supply Ukraine with tanks, the AP reported at the time. Several media outlets also featured the footage in similar reports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Oct. 9 that Russia is "extremely concerned" by the "spiral of violence" in Israel. Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Israel and Egypt, told the state Tass agency Oct. 7 that Moscow has been in touch with "all parties (of the conflict), including Arab countries" and was urging for "an immediate cease-fire and peace."

— Melissa Goldin.

This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. 

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