Fact Check: Widespread Misinformation Clouds Israel-Hamas War Imagery

What happened

The Associated Press reports that an influx of videos and photos about the Israel-Hamas war flooding social media includes a mixture of authentic content and misleading or false claims, creating challenges for observers trying to distinguish fact from fiction.

Outside Brief is treating this as a source-led account. Any disputed responsibility, casualty figure, battlefield claim or single-source assertion should be treated as unconfirmed/hearsay unless confirmed by another reliable source or a named official. One prominent false claim involves videos purporting to show a Palestinian 'crisis actor' who is seriously injured in a hospital one day and walking unharmed the next. AP shows these videos feature two different individuals—the hospital footage predates the current conflict by months. The injured individual, Mohammed Zendiq, is a 16-year-old from the West Bank whose leg was amputated after clashes in July 2023, while the other man, Saleh Aljafarawi, posted recent videos from Gaza.

Another widespread falsehood involves a widely shared video claimed to show thousands of U.S. Marines landing in Israel amid escalating tensions. The AP clarifies this footage is from June 2022 and shows U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division soldiers arriving in Romania for NATO exercises, not Marines in Israel.

Known from the source

• Videos circulating claiming to show the same Palestinian man seriously injured and later unharmed are actually of two different individuals.
• The hospital video showing a seriously injured man dates from August 2023, predating the recent Israel-Hamas war.
• The injured man in the hospital video is identified as Mohammed Zendiq, a Palestinian from the West Bank whose leg was amputated following clashes in July 2023.
• The man walking through Gaza wreckage is Saleh Aljafarawi, who posted the video in late October 2023.
• A viral video claimed to show U.S. Marines arriving in Israel is actually footage from 2022 of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division landing in Romania.

What remains unclear

These examples underline the extent of the misinformation complicating the conflict's coverage, particularly concerning military movements and victim identities. While genuine footage documents real suffering and displacement, many circulating posts present outdated or unrelated content misrepresenting the scale and nature of current events.

What remains unclear: Confirm whether the central claim is corroborated; until then treat it as unconfirmed/hearsay. Further independent verification is needed for all casualty figures and injury reports in Gaza amid the conflict. Claims about the latest military deployments or troop movements around Israel and Gaza require additional authoritative sourcing. Hostage-related reports and specific airstrike attribution require further confirmation from reliable sources.

Evidence note

Outside Brief has kept this brief source-led and attributed. Claims should be read alongside the original source linked below.

Original source: AP Israel Hamas War. Open the source.