Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
Informal/Satirical news sources are not allowed on the main feed of the community but you are free to post them in this thread.
Please remember that all community and instance rules apply to this thread hence keep is civil.
IDF misinformation from the start of the conflict until now:
1. Hamas beheaded forty babies
Context: the reports of Hamas beheading babies came from an interview by i24 News of an IDF commander. This quickly spread through Western media outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX News, the Telegraph, Daily Mail, etc. I haven't done a comprehensive sweep of who picked up the story and who didn't (and of course now it's much harder to do so because of retractions, edits, my lack of direct TV access, and SEO), but from what I can tell AP News and Al Jazeera have been relatively reliable.
Lack of evidence: 6 days ago, Anadolu (Turkish state-owned media) reported that: Israeli army says it does not have 'confirmation' about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’. This was later confirmed by other sources.
Misinformation: 5 days ago, Biden stated "I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed, pictures of terrorists beheading children,” said Biden, who described Saturday’s attack as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”. The White House later posted a retraction of this claim: "A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” The Post reported on Wednesday.
2. Shani Louk, claimed to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted
Context: images circulated online about a video purporting to show Shani Louk, a German national attending the Nova EDM festival, on the back of a truck, face-down. Claims that she appeared to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted circulated on the same media sources discussed above.
Misinformation: given the videos we have, we know with a decent amount of certainty that the video being shown is of Shani Louk. However:
A. She's clearly not naked in the video and you can see that she is wearing black shorts as well as boots. A top is also visible (but she is face-down, so we can't see much of it). Neither her shorts nor her boots appeared to have been removed. From what I can tell, she was initially wearing a long skirt that was likely lost in the chaos.
B. Her family claims that she is alive and receiving medical attention at a hospital in Gaza, which does explain why they would be transporting her. There is visible blood on the back of her head, but she does not seem to be bleeding profusely when the video was taken.
C. I will not comment on whether or not she was sexually assaulted.
3. 260 dead Israelis at EDM festival
Context: many news sources independently verified that 260 bodies were pulled from the EDM festival. Many sources reported that this was an act of terror with no strategic objective and a massacre of innocent civilians.
Lack of context: Nova was held in Kibbutz Re'im, mere minutes from Gaza, and also mere minutes from the IDF Gaza Division's Re'im base. Tanks are clearly visible in videos leaving the festival, as are armed personnel. Hebrew-language interviews of released prisoners are providing more insight into these attacks, but I do not speak Hebrew so I will refrain from commenting on this further. Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
Potential misinformation: Hamas claiming that fighters were told to avoid harming civilians does not mean that Hamas fighters did not harm civilians, obviously.
Potential misinformation: the reports indicate that 260 bodies were found, but their origin has not been confirmed. We know that armed personnel discharged their weapons against Hamas fighters (and vice-versa). How many of the dead are civilians, IDF, armed security, or Hamas?
Much of the media coverage on this conflict has been used to spread misinformation, even from traditionally "reliable" sources in the Western sphere. As a result, I would strongly recommend supplementing coverage of these events with those outside the Western sphere. The journalism being done is lazy.
I had a frustrating conversation with one person around the "40 beheaded babies" claim. Snopes dug into the claim. The IDF never I think we'll never be able to verify that particular claim. The flip side is that in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby regardless of how it got that way. My objection is that facts matter, particularly with claims of particular brutality or when the situation is a powder keg.
I don't buy this for one minute. Not a minute. Palestinian civilian casualties are high because Hamas and other organizations operate from inside of neighborhoods as guerrilla forces. Israel has separate forces. You wouldn't get massive civilian casualties from Hamas targeting the IDF's bases. They can make all the claims they want, but it doesn't fit with the facts.
A lot of these settlements have either contracters or the IDF directly providing security. So the idea that Hamas could have broken out of Gaza and just found all the soldiers neatly in their bases seems unbelievable. The IDF is an occupying force, not a European military where it's just some dudes with their thumbs up their asses in a barracks near some nature reserve.
Ultimately we can't know how Hamas leadership told their soldiers to behave. But they do have a clear incentives not to condone the killing of civilians: they want to capture hostages and use them as leverage. They need to create the expectation that these hostages are treated fairly and can be returned safely so that it is entirely up to Israel whether it wants those civilians to die.
Tragically, civilians always die in wars. Both sides always propagandise this to claim that it is the other side that is just killing civilians as policy. The facts however, are abundantly clear when it comes to the question of which side shows the greater disregard for civilian casualties.