![[Freelance]](../gif/fl3H.png)
A case study in misinformation
IN ISRAEL'S war on Gaza misinformation and disinformation are rife. The International Federation of Journalists felt obliged to issue a reminder to the trade against repeating unverified information, unsourced videos and images from social networks.
A recent sequence of events suggests just how destructive doing this can be.
Part 1: setup?
The account "@HonestReporting" on Twitter (currently labelled "X") describes its mission as "exposing anti-Israel media bias". On 8 November at 17:45 (all times are UK times) it posted:
Scoop: What were @AP, @Reuter, @CNN & @nytimes Gaza freelance photographers doing inside Israel on October 7? Coincidence or were they part of the plan?
This was reposted over 3800 times. Reposters included the Israeli Government Press Office, which among other things issues permits to reporters. On 9 November at 09:01 the GPO announced:
GPO Director Nitzan Chen demands explanations from the bureau chiefs of @AP, @Reuters, @CNN and @nytimes over disturbing findings by @HonestReporting on involvement of their photographers in the events of October 7th, which crosses every professional and moral red line.
That rang alarm bells. It did seem likely that someone was getting the justification for further attacks on journalists in first.
And sure enough, Danny Danon, Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was one of the official sources to announce (in his case at 13:52 on 9 November):
Israel's internal security agency announced that they will eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre.
The "photojournalists" who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.
Neither the GPO message nor that from Danny Danon had been retracted or revised at 19:11 on 12 November. For the avoidance of doubt, the attack of 7 October is to be condemned.
Part 2: attack?
At 23:22 on 9 November a profusion of messages started to appear from the Al-Shifa hospital at Zeitoun in northern Gaza along these lines:
There is now bombing inside the Al-Shifa complex, directly next to the journalists’ tent, and there are casualties
It seems that the journalists there were unharmed.
An hour later, at 00:19 on 10 November, messages started to appear (warning: bloody graphic content) claiming:
Israel just dropped what appears to be a Hellfire R9X missile next to the journalists tent outside Al-Shifa hospital. At least one man lost his leg, as seen in this video, while another is injured. Another Israeli war crime documented for the world to see
That's not part of a Hellfire missile
The R9X variant of the Hellfire is a bladed missile, with no explosive warhead. It is an assassination weapon. It first came to our attention when the US used one to kill Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 31 July 2022 - see this explainer from Le Monde (in English). The power of the story seemed too good to be true: the state of Israel was setting out to assassinate journalists, as its representatives had promised. And it seems it may have been too "good" a story. The only image that we have found that is claimed to stand up the identification of an R9X is something else entirely - a shell casing, likely an illumination shell. That would contain white phosphorous, but that's a whole other argument. That's not to say that anyone has offered evidence that no R9X was used - or even denied that one was.
Update 20:30 12 November: Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah (@GhassanAbuSitt1), a reconstructive surgeon from London who has been working at Al-Shifa hospital but has now evacuated to Al-Ahli hospital, also near Zeitoun, spoke at a webinar organised by the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. He reported treating injuries caused by blades and by a "new type of Hellfire missile that delivers discs".
Part 3: the correction is always too late
The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN and the New York Times all issued denials of the "@HonestReporting" claim. As the Jewish Telegraph Agency put it on Thursday 9 November: "The report released on Wednesday, did not include concrete evidence of collusion. But it suggested the photographers knew ahead of time about the assault or 'coordinated' with the attackers, since Hamas breached Israel’s border early on a Saturday morning when the journalists would likely not be working." Have those who rely on the report never met a freelance photographer? The agencies point out that the first pictures they distributed were more than 45 minutes after the incursion became public, and long after the start of the missile salvo that preceded it.
At 01:33 on 10 November the Associated Press reported that "Gil Hoffman, executive director of @HonestReporting and a former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, admitted Thursday the group had no evidence to back up that suggestion. He said he was satisfied with subsequent explanations from several of these journalists that they did not know." But "they were legitimate questions to be asked," Hoffman told AP.
Only asking questions. Another prominent re-poster of the question was the ex-footballer David Icke, who likes just to just ask questions - offensive questions with anti-semitic implications - such as "are our media controlled by a cabal of rootless cosmopolitan lizards?"
Later on 10 November Al-Shifa Hospital came under undisputed attack with high explosives and, it is alleged, sniper fire into its windows. At 00:34 on 12 November the World Health Organization office for the Eastern Mediterranean reported:
.@WHO has lost communication with its contacts in Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza. As horrifying reports of the hospital facing repeated attacks continue to emerge, we assume our contacts joined tens of thousands of displaced people and are fleeing the area.
Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts Associated Press 30/10/23
The Hamas massacre led to the spread of horror stories, not all of which happened in reality. The truth is hard enough haaretz.com 08/12/23 (in Hebrew)