Disinformation surge threatens to fuel Israel-Hamas conflict

Gaza [Palestine], October 19: As the Israel-Hamas war rages, regulators and analysts say a wave of online disinformation risks further inflaming passions and escalating the conflict in an electronic fog of war.
An explosion at a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds of Palestinians on Tuesday is the latest focus of the surge of activity as supporters of both sides in the battle between Israel and Hamas try to bolster their own side's narrative and cast doubts on the other's.
U.S. President Joe Biden referred to the challenge of verifying information during the conflict in remarks about the hospital blast on a visit to Israel on Wednesday, saying responsibility for the incident appeared to lie with Israel's adversaries.
Reuters fact-checking unit has identified numerous cases of social media posts using fake images and information about the Israel-Hamas conflict, and others in which confusion rather than deliberate disinformation appears to have heightened tensions.
An X account under the name Farida Khan claiming to be an Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza posted a message saying they had a video of a "Hamas missile landing in the hospital" in Tuesday's incident. Al Jazeera subsequently alerted social media users that the account had no ties to the news service. Al Jazeera told Reuters it does not employ a person with the name Farida Khan. The account was later removed.
A video of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking about Ukraine last year was shared this month with fabricated subtitles warning the U.S. not to interfere in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Amid genuine images showing dead bodies of those killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, a 2015 video of the lynching of a 16-year-old girl in Guatemala has been misrepresented online as showing a young Israeli woman being burnt by a "Palestinian mob".
After receiving online criticism about blue and white flags used in her act, the pop singer Pink posted a tweet saying: "I am getting many threats because people mistakenly believe I am flying Israeli flags in my show. I am not.
Heightened tensions can have real-world consequences beyond the Israeli towns and kibbutzes where 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas gunmen on Oct. 7, and in Gaza, where more than 3,000 Palestinians have been killed so far by Israel's retaliatory bombardment.
France has been put on its highest security alert after a teacher was killed in an Islamist attack and bomb alerts forced the evacuation of the Louvre museum. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the attack bore a link to events in the Middle East.
In Illinois a landlord was charged with hate crimes, accused of stabbing a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy to death and wounding his mother, who were his tenants. The sheriff's office said they were "targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis".
Jewish schools in London closed over the weekend after a Jewish charity that provides security recorded an increase of 400% in antisemitic incidents since the attacks when compared to the same period last year.
In modern conflicts, across the globe as well as in the Middle East, warring sides have long used television - and more recently the internet - to win the war for hearts and minds as well as the war on the ground, often mixing truth with fiction.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation