X has been an important tool for learning about the violence unfolding in Israel and Gaza, but some of the viral images coming out of the region are fake.
Hamas staged a coordinated attack against Israel late Friday ET, Saturday local time, and Israel responded by launching airstrikes against the territory. X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has been an important tool for learning about the unfolding violence in the region, but some of the viral images coming out of Israel and Gaza are old or taken out of context, while others are just completely fake.
The violence has killed at least 250 Israelis and at least 230 Palestinians, according to the latest figures from the , with thousands more injured on both sides. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Saturday, “we are at war, and we will win it.”
But bad information is getting thrown around at a rapid pace on X as the world tries to make sense of the violence. A video shared by an account with the name Junaid Rajput purports to show a militant with Hamas firing a shoulder-mounted weapon and striking an Israeli helicopter. But as the BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh points out, the video is actually from the video game Arma 3.
The video has been seen by over 300,000 people on X at the time of this writing and hasn’t yet received a Community Note, the crowdsourced fact-checking program that allows users to submit corrections for inaccurate information.
Other accounts have also shared the same video with different captions, including one that reads, “Hamas fighters shot down Israel war helicopter in Gaza, Palestine.” Again, the video is actually from a game and doesn’t show anything that’s happening in the real world.
Another Twitter account called AstroCounselKK has spread a false claim that Israel has authorized a tactical nuclear strike against the Gaza Strip. There’s no evidence that Israel has authorized a nuclear strike, tactical or otherwise, in the region, though Israel has begun airstrikes in Gaza, which are expected to escalate overnight, according to the Associated Press.
Tactical nuclear weapons are low-yield nuclear devices that are tremendously powerful, but are small relative to some of the biggest nuclear bombs in existence.
