The last person to stumble was Joe Biden. The American President stated this Wednesday: “I never thought I would see photos of terrorists beheading children and I confirmed it.” These words said the Democratic leader during a meeting in Washington with leaders of the Jewish community . And it spread like wildfire, a day after a reporter from Israeli broadcaster i24 first reported on the beheadings of 40 minors by Hamas militants. After Biden’s intervention, the White House responded to the furore, clarifying that the president had neither seen the images nor confirmed such an atrocity, and that his comment was based on statements from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the press of that country . Unconfirmed news thus penetrated the speech of the leader of the leading world power, a valid source of information for public opinion.
“Biden confirms” or “Biden lies” were some of the hundreds of messages with which the X network (formerly Twitter) responded to the American president’s words. Manuel R. Torres Soriano, professor of political science at the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville and expert on propaganda and terrorism, explains this phenomenon linked to disinformation with one word: “receptivity.” That is, if I sympathize with Palestine, it will be easier to question such a cruel attack, while if I lean towards Israel, I will believe Biden even if the White House provides remedial action. “Unlike in Ukraine, there is an additional difficulty here,” says Torres Soriano, “in Europe there is a clear position towards Russia, an actor that is trying to contaminate and against which society is immune.” Now [en el conflicto entre Hamás e Israel]the positioning is not so clear.”
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According to the experts monitoring the networks, it is clear that disinformation and propaganda is coming from both sides and at unusual levels. From Hamas, to praise and exploit its attack on Israeli territory as a sign of its strength, and from the Israeli side, to consolidate the label of “terrorist” when referring to this armed Palestinian group, which it practically associates with the Islamic State ( ISIS) was destroyed in northern Syria four years ago.
i24NEWS correspondent @Nicole_Zedek reporting from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a quarter-mile from the Gaza border, recounting the atrocities committed in the small community, which remains an active scene as soldiers clear booby traps and recover the bodies of dozens of victims pic.twitter.com/J4ZfWZQYHp
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 10, 2023
The information about the beheadings, broadcast this Tuesday on i24, an Israeli channel owned by tycoon Patrick Drahi, has sparked a heated debate about misinformation. These are the facts: i24 journalist Nicole Zedeck told the camera on Tuesday from the kibbutz (Israeli agricultural cooperative) Kfar Aza, which was massacred by the Palestinian militia, that “some soldiers” had told her that there were children with the “severed head.” In his X-profile he adds that, according to his sources, around 40 “children/babies” were murdered. One of the soldiers he speaks to who, according to i24 videos, reports the barbarity David Ben Zion, deputy commander of an Israeli military unit and settler leader with a clear political profile. In just 24 hours, Zedeck’s recorded chronicle was collected Marc Owen Jones, Middle East disinformation expert, received 44 million impressions, 300,000 likes and 100,000 reposts. The echo could not be stopped.
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The brutal attack on Kfar Aza left dozens of people dead, adding to the 1,300 deaths recorded so far in Israel. The photos taken by the photojournalists present at the crime scene proved the deaths of minors. However, neither the Israeli government nor the army has yet provided evidence of the beheading of 40 children. Nevertheless, soldier Ben Zion’s message reached politicians, to leaders like Biden or the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
“Each conflict receives more media coverage than the previous one,” says Professor Torres Soriano. “It happened with Ukraine; It’s a spiral that doesn’t stop, and with Israel-Palestine it will get even bigger.” “The flow of information is not just limited to the two competitors,” the online propaganda expert continues, “there are also many other actors Part, from Ukraine, China, the Gulf States, Iran or Latin America, whose machinery is already greased and “they are taking advantage of the new open window.” This window consists of two sides: the first, as in Kfar Aza, is with traditional sources linked (army, government, journalists…), and the second is the one that works through individuals, as Torres Soriano points out “They feel called to participate in a global debate.” In the case of the Middle East, very charged with Emotions and polarization.
Great video released by Hamas: Israeli babies rapiti tenuti in gabbie per Animals. The author of the Sghignazza video. E ci sono varie altre gabbie soon. pic.twitter.com/5xmBtfljL9
– Lucio Malan (@LucioMalan) October 8, 2023
There are hundreds of examples of this second rail. This Sunday, 24 hours after Hamas entered Israeli territory, Lucio Malan, an Italian senator from the far-right Brothers of Italy party, tweeted a video in which five children appeared in cages. Malan said in his message that they had been “kidnapped” by the Palestinian militia. It is not so. The Israeli investigative project FakeReporter, which does an excellent job of verification – as well as the Palestinians Khasif and Tahaqaq – raised the alarm and clarified that it was a recording uploaded to the Internet before the Hamas offensive. Although this information now includes Malan’s message directly below the video, the senator is keeping it on his profile.
More hoaxes: One of the militants’ tactics to get into Israel was the use of paragliders. Paul Golding, leader of the ultra-British First party, tweeted this Sunday a video in which dozens of men rushed onto sports facilities. “Hamas paragliders in action,” Golding headlined a message from X. It wasn’t like that. Using free-to-use verification tools, it can be concluded that the recording is of military exercises conducted in Egypt in September. Another of the most returned messages since Hamas began its attack on southern Israel was the news of Biden himself approving a new military aid package for Israel worth $8 billion (7.5 million euros). The photo of the alleged document circulated on the networks. It wasn’t like that either. The verification unit of the France Presse agency analyzed, among other things, the US government paper and file and concluded that it was a forgery of a memorandum intended for Ukraine and signed on July 25.
A video states that it is an Egyptian military exercise.
— Fact Finder (@posttruth2030) October 8, 2023
The flood of fake news is so great that this Wednesday the European Union, one of the most active institutions in the fight against disinformation, through the Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Thierry Breton, urged the X networks and Facebook to stop this type of fake news stopping news in line with the Digital Services Act passed in Brussels last year. A day later, Breton did the same with TikTok. For now, X, the former Twitter chaired by American tycoon Elon Musk, reported on Thursday that it had deleted hundreds of accounts linked to the Islamist group Hamas. It wasn’t enough. The European Commission has launched an investigation to find out whether X is complying with the new European regulation to control “illegal and harmful” content.
However, and as FakeReporter warns in a news exchange, there are other networks that are not as visible and are used to host unverified videos, photos and text. These include Telegram, a platform based in Dubai but with Russian roots, which has already proven to be the platform of choice for public and private actors during the conflict in Ukraine. “One of our biggest challenges,” they emphasize from the Israeli project, “is the lack of regulation by social media companies and their inability to moderate their platforms.” Some, like Telegram, where terrible things are spread and groups are organized, are virtually untouchable.”
Much of the content about the war between Hamas and Israel that X users are spreading these days was previously broadcast on Telegram, a booming network. This analysis is shared by Professor Torres Soriano: “For many it is the only refuge of freedom, with individual actors who have their customers and sell their product, with messages like ‘The media won’t tell you this’.”
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