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Fact or Fiction: Israel needs fake nurses to justify killing Gaza babies | Israel-Palestine conflict<\/p>\n
In Gaza, a child is killed every\u00a010 minutes. Since October 7, Israel has\u00a0killed\u00a0more than 4,000 children. Now, premature babies at Gaza\u2019s al-Shifa Hospital are\u00a0dying\u00a0because the institution is out of power after\u00a0over\u00a0a month of Israel\u2019s siege, and so is unable to operate incubators.<\/p>\n
Israel knows it risks losing international support for its ongoing slaughter of children. Western allies like French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister\u00a0Justin Trudeau,\u00a0who have until now been steadfast in supporting Israel, have in the past week publicly asked the Israeli government to stop killing children, even if Macron has since softened his tone.<\/p>\n
As a result, Israel\u2019s propaganda and disinformation machine is finding new ways to justify the killing of children and the bombing of medical facilities.<\/p>\n
Usually, Israel\u2019s first response to accusations of atrocities is denial. When that fails, the second strategy is to blame Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups for Palestinian deaths.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t given up on those strategies, but is also trying to directly link Palestinian children to Hamas, and thereby seek to portray them \u2013 and the places where they are sheltering \u2013 as legitimate targets.<\/p>\n
On November 11, the official Arabic account run by Israel\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted<\/a> a video of a nurse, apparently agitated, talking about Hamas overrunning the al-Shifa Hospital, and taking all the fuel and morphine. She claimed that because Hamas had stolen morphine, she couldn\u2019t use it on a five-year-old with a fracture.<\/p>\n The video, which was retweeted thousands of times, was a clear fake. No staff in the vicinity appear to recognise the individual featured, casting doubt on her identity and role. Robert Mackey, a journalist with the research agency Forensic Architecture,\u00a0spoke to three<\/a> Doctors Without Borders staff members working at the al-Shifa Hospital, none of whom recognised her.<\/p>\n The video was almost comic in its absurdity. The nurse spoke with a non-Palestinian accent, and her dialogue seemed to perfectly echo Israeli\u00a0military\u00a0talking points about Hamas stealing all the fuel from hospitals.<\/p>\n Moreover, the strategic placement of a Palestinian Health Ministry logo was a contrived attempt to mislead or create a \u2018honeytrap\u2019 for open-source intelligence. Adding to the suspicion were the stock audio-sounding bombing effects, and her immaculately clean white coat and perfect makeup, all of which seemed out of place in a supposedly dire setting.<\/p>\n The purpose of the video was clear, to blame Hamas for the suffering of children and legitimise the Israeli military\u2019s claims that Hamas is using civilians and children as human shields.<\/p>\n Eventually, as the Israeli government was called out over the video, the Foreign Ministry quietly deleted its post \u2013 without any explanation.<\/p>\n But spreading disinformation and then deleting it has become routine, raising the question: Why is the\u00a0Israeli military\u2019s\u00a0propaganda so sloppy? After\u00a0all, doesn\u2019t Israel risk losing credibility this way?<\/p>\n No, because the benefits outweigh the costs. The old adage, \u201cA lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes\u201d, tells us most of what we need to know about propaganda. The key is not truthfulness, but rather speed and primacy.<\/p>\n Controlling the narrative means getting information out faster than your enemy, and making that information sensational \u2013 regardless of whether it is factual. One study showed\u00a0that\u00a086 percent\u00a0of\u00a0people do not fact-check news they see on social media.<\/p>\n Once something false goes viral, the people who see\u00a0it\u00a0are unlikely to see the fact-checked version. The audience for such videos aren\u2019t astute fact-checkers. In Israel\u2019s case, large numbers of the audience are English-speaking, Western viewers who won\u2019t catch fake accents and have no reason to believe such information is false.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to remember, propaganda does not need to be sophisticated to be effective \u2013 just fast and sensationalist. Social media is perfect for this.<\/p>\n Beyond blaming Hamas, a more sinister stage in the legitimisation of Israel\u2019s killing of children is emerging \u2013 the attempt to smear Palestinian children as recipients of evil,\u00a0anti-Semitic Hamas propaganda. That Palestinian children are only trained to become \u2018terrorists\u2019.<\/p>\n On November 5, Israel\u2019s official Arabic account\u00a0tweeted a cartoon\u00a0<\/a>showing that Israel brings its babies up with \u2018love\u2019, while Hamas fills babies in Gaza with \u2018hate\u2019.<\/p>\nHate-filled, Mein Kampf-reading children<\/h2>\n