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How Gaza war disinformation spread
Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor of media analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar, says social media and tech companies have played a significant role in spreading disinformation about the October 7 attack in southern Israel, and about Palestinians and Arabs as a whole.
“The most significant was the one at the very beginning, which was the disinformation that Hamas had beheaded up to 40 babies. This news originated in the i24 News report, and it spread virally on social media, unchecked. It was then on front pages of newspapers across the world the next day,” he told Al Jazeera.
Owen Jones noted that the so-called “dead baby propaganda” has long been used at times of war.
“The idea that killing babies is a red line for any society, culture across the world, and this was the pretext which allowed Israel to basically launch the genocidal campaign in Gaza because it allowed them to say, ‘look, Hamas is brutal, they’re beheading babies’,” Owen Jones said.
Over the past year, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 17,000 children, according to health officials, with the UN calling the besieged and bombarded territory “a graveyard for children”.
Israel uses disinformation to justify war crimes
For decades, Israeli leaders have used dehumanising language to describe Palestinians in order to justify Israel’s occupation.
Since October 7, words have become a weapon to legitimise the war on Gaza. Propaganda and disinformation have also backed up the military offensive on the ground. Palestinians say this is meant to provide justification for war crimes.
