Misinformation has flourished on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and other social media about the violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

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Lies on Social Media Inflame Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Misinformation has flourished on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and
other social media about the violence between Israelis and
Palestinians.
Published May 14, 2021Updated May 18, 2021
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The Al Shrouq building in central Gaza, which hosts offices for media
outlets and companies, was destroyed during Israeli airstrikes on
Wednesday.Hosam Salem for The New York Times
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In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a
spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket
attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas.

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At least that is what Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Ofir Gendelman,
said the video portrayed. But his tweet with the footage, which was
shared hundreds of times as the conflict between Palestinians and
Israelis escalated, was not from Gaza. It was not even from this week.
Instead, the video that he shared, which can be found on many
YouTube channels and other video-hosting sites, was from 2018. And
according to captions on older versions of the video, it showed
militants firing rockets not from Gaza but from Syria or Libya.
The video was just one piece of misinformation that has circulated on
Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media this
week about the rising violence between Israelis and Palestinians,
as Israeli military ground forces attacked Gaza early on Friday. The
false information has included videos, photos and clips of text
purported to be from government officials in the region, with posts
baselessly claiming early this week that Israeli soldiers had invaded
Gaza, or that Palestinian mobs were about to rampage through sleepy
Israeli suburbs.
The lies have been amplified as they have been shared thousands of
times on Twitter and Facebook, spreading to WhatsApp and Telegram
groups that have thousands of members, according to an analysis by
The New York Times. The effect of the misinformation is potentially
deadly, disinformation experts said, inflaming tensions between
Israelis and Palestinians when suspicions and distrust have already
run high.
“A lot of it is rumor and broken telephone, but it is being shared right
now because people are desperate to share information about the
unfolding situation,” said Arieh Kovler, a political analyst and
independent researcher in Jerusalem who studies misinformation.
“What makes it more confusing is that it is a mix of false claims and
genuine stuff, which is being attributed to the wrong place or the
wrong time.”
Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, did not
respond to requests for comment. Christina LoNigro, a spokeswoman
for WhatsApp, said the company had put limits on how many times

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people could forward a message as a way of clamping down on
misinformation.
TikTok said in a statement: “Our teams have been working swiftly to
remove misinformation, attempts to incite violence and other content
that violates our Community Guidelines, and will continue to do so.”

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“Arabs are knocking on doors,” read one misleading message that was
posted to WhatsApp groups and Telegram groups this week.
The Times found several pieces of misinformation that spread across
Israeli and Palestinian neighborhood and activist WhatsApp groups
this week. One, which appeared as a block of Hebrew text or an audio
file, contained a warning that Palestinian mobs were preparing to
descend on Israeli citizens.
“Palestinians are coming, parents protect your children,” read the
message, which pointed specifically to several suburban areas north
of Tel Aviv. Thousands of people were in one of the Telegram groups
where the post was shared; the post then appeared in several
WhatsApp groups, which had dozens to hundreds of members.
Israeli police did not respond to a request for comment. There were no
reports of violence in the areas mentioned in the message.
In another post early this week, which was written in Arabic and sent
to a WhatsApp group with over 200 members, warnings flashed that
Israeli soldiers were set to invade the Gaza Strip.
“The invasion is coming,” read the text, which urged people to pray
for their families.
Arabic and Hebrew-language news sources also appeared to amplify
some misinformation. Several Israeli news outlets recently discussed
a video that showed a family walking to a funeral with a wrapped
body, only to drop the body when a police siren sounded. The video
was cited by the news organizations as evidence that Palestinian
families were holding fake funerals and exaggerating the number of
people killed in the conflict.
In fact, the video appeared on YouTube over a year ago and may have
shown a Jordanian family holding a fake funeral, according to a
caption left on the original video.
Clips of another video showing religious Jews tearing their clothing
as a sign of devotion also circulated on Arabic-language news sites

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this week. The clips were cited as evidence that Jews were faking
their own injuries in clashes in Jerusalem.
That was false. The video had been uploaded to WhatsApp and
Facebook several times earlier this year, according to the Times
analysis.
Damage in the city of Ashkelon on Wednesday resulting from a
missile from Gaza.Dan Balilty for The New York Times
There is a long history of misinformation being shared among Israeli
and Palestinian groups, with false claims and conspiracies spiking
during moments of heightened violence in the region.
In recent years, Facebook has removed several disinformation
campaigns by Iran aimed at stoking tensions among Israelis and
Palestinians. Twitter also took down a network of fake accounts in
2019 that was used to smear opponents of Mr. Netanyahu.
The grainy video that Mr. Gendelman shared on Twitter on
Wednesday, which purportedly showed Palestinian militants
launching rocket attacks at Israelis, was removed on Thursday after
Twitter labeled it “misleading content.” Mr. Gendelman’s office did
not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Gendelman appears to have mischaracterized the contents of
other videos as well. On Tuesday, he posted a video on Twitter
showing three adult men being instructed to lie down on the floor,
with their bodies being arranged by a crowd nearby. Mr. Gendelman
said the video showed Palestinians staging bodies for a photo
opportunity.
Mr. Kovler, who traced the video back to its source, said the video
had been posted in March to TikTok. Its accompanying text said the
footage showed people practicing for a bomb drill.