False claims of staged deaths surge in Israel-Gaza war - BBC News

People on both sides have wrongly claimed deaths were faked, as experts warn it harms hopes for peace.

22 December 2023Shareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingRelated TopicsIsrael-Gaza warImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Unblurred images of Muhammad Hani al-Zahar, a baby with rigor mortis, were used online to claim his death was fakedBy Olga Robinson & Shayan SardarizadehBBC VerifyThe mother and grandfather of five-month-old Palestinian baby Muhammad Hani al-Zahar held his dead body in front of a hospital following the resumption of hostilities in Gaza on the first day of December.

But when footage of the grief-stricken family holding the body in their arms went viral on social media, many posts falsely claimed Muhammad was merely a doll, and not a real baby.

These claims were amplified in an article by the Jerusalem Post, an influential Israeli newspaper, which showed an image of Muhammad in rigor mortis after his death and said it proved he was a doll. After a backlash, the paper removed the article from its website, saying on X (formerly Twitter) that the report "was based on faulty sourcing".

A few weeks earlier, a video of Israeli siblings Rotem Mathias, 16, and his two sisters, Shakked and Shir, went viral online. Rotem witnessed his parents get killed by Hamas gunmen on 7 October as they sheltered in their house in a kibbutz near the border with Gaza.

The viral video featured edited clips from the siblings' interviews with US outlets ABC and CNN days after the attack. It falsely claimed that they were "crisis actors" who were lying about their parents' deaths and struggling to hold their laughter in front of cameras.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67760523?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

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