Images Journalist access to the Gaza Strip has been severely restricted by Israel, leading to widespread accusations from media organizations and press freedom groups that the Israeli government is deliberately obstructing independent coverage in order to suppress evidence of its military actions and limit global scrutiny. Since the start of the war, Israel has only allowed limited media access to Gaza through IDF-escorted embeds, during which journalists have no freedom of movement and must submit their content for military review. Critics argue that this level of control results in selectively framed reporting that aligns with the Israeli military's perspective. Some analysts and press freedom organizations have described the resulting coverage as a form of propaganda due to the lack of independent verification and the inability to engage with Palestinian sources. According to historian and photography expert
Gerhard Paul, both the Israeli military and Hamas seek to influence Western public opinion, the former by determining which images can be released and denying journalists access, and if exceptions are made only granted under strict military supervision so they can "only see what they are supposed to see." Paul asserts that the Palestinian side, particularly Hamas, does so through the strategic use of emotionally charged imagery, and that many images, while not fabricated, are carefully composed or accompanied by misleading captions. Christopher Resch of
Reporters Without Borders emphasizes that not all photographers in Gaza are affiliated with Hamas and warns that characterizing their work as propaganda can endanger them, as such accusations can lead to them being perceived as combatants and targeted accordingly. Resch also stated that, since the
October 7 attacks, the Israeli government has attempted to cast doubt on the credibility of journalists and photographers reporting from the region.
Impersonations Following the
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, an X account claiming to be an
Al Jazeera journalist said they had video of a "Hamas missile landing in the hospital". Al Jazeera subsequently clarified that they were not associated with the account, and it was later removed. Another X account that promoted
pro-Kremlin misinformation claimed
The Wall Street Journal had reported that the explosion was caused by a
Mark 84 bomb but
The Wall Street Journal had not published such a report. In November 2023, a video appearing to show a nurse at the
Al Shifa hospital went viral. She claimed that she was unable to treat patients because Hamas had taken over the entire hospital and were stealing fuel and medicine, with the video ending with her pleading for all Palestinians to leave Al Shifa. Many were quick to point out the falsehood in the video, as none of the documented doctors and nurses at the hospital recognize the woman depicted, and a reported Israeli accent and inability to speak clear Arabic. Additionally, according to Esther Chan from
RMIT FactLab's CrossCheck, an analysis by
open-source investigators had determined that the video was likely doctored to artificially include fake sounds of explosions. The video was originally posted on the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel's Arabic Twitter account and it was boosted by
Edward Haïm Cohen Halala, who has reported ties to the Israeli government, and has a popular social media presence with an Arabic following.
Pallywood allegations Sexual violence On 25 March 2024,
Al Jazeera took down its video of a woman named Jamila al-Hissi who said that Israeli soldiers had "raped women, kidnapped women, executed women, and pulled dead bodies from under the rubble to unleash their dogs on them" during their
siege of Al-Shifa Hospital. Former managing director of
Al Jazeera, Yasser Abu Hilalah, wrote on X, "Hamas investigations revealed that the story of the rape of women in Shifa Hospital was fabricated." Abu Hilalah reported that al-Hissi "justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation's fervor and brotherhood".
Gaza Health Ministry casualty reports The
Gaza Health Ministry's (GHM) figures are used by most humanitarian agencies and widely cited in media sources; they are considered to be reliable by many experts and have been verified by several independent bodies, but have been challenged by Israeli and US agencies. The
Biden administration initially disputed the GHM's casualty count and in 2024, the
US House of Representatives voted to ban the
State Department from citing the GHM's casualty figures. The administration ultimately changed to faith in the health ministry statistics. The GHM's casualty count was also initially disputed by the
Trump administration but was later cited by
President Trump. In January 2026, an Israeli military official admitted that the GHM's death tolls were accurate. Abraham Wyner, a
Pennsylvania professor of statistics, wrote in
Tablet that the GHM casualty figures were "faked". Wyner's article was analyzed by professor Joshua Loftus of the
London School of Economics, who concluded Wyner's article was "one of the worst abuses of statistics I’ve ever seen".
Columbia professor Les Roberts said that GHM numbers were accurate and probably even an underestimate. Wyner also said that there were peculiarities in the data, such as a strong
negative correlation between the daily death counts of men and women. Wyner later told
The Intercept that he had only disputed the proportion of women and children killed but not the GHM's total casualty count. The
Henry Jackson Society's Andrew Fox published a report on 13 December 2024 alleging that the Gaza Health Ministry inflated the number of civilians deaths caused by Israeli attacks. According to the report there were significant errors in the data, with men being registered as women, adults as children, and natural deaths counted as killed by Israeli attacks, which were intentionally inserted to inflate the civilian death toll. Professor
Michael Spagat of AOAV responded by noting that such errors were marginal and random, as Fox only identified 2 adults registered as children, 3 "natural deaths", and misclassified sex cases affect 0.5% of the overall figures. Moreover, these errors went in both directions in roughly the same amount (67 men listed as women, 49 women listed as men, and age adjustments were spread widely across sex and age category). Spagat thus concluded that these were routine and minor calculation errors that do not affect the GHM's overall data on civilian deaths. In January 2025 a
peer-reviewed analysis of deaths due to traumatic injury in the
Gaza war between October 2023 and 30 June 2024 was published in the medical journal
The Lancet, estimating over 70,000 deaths from traumatic injuries as of October 2024, with 59.1% of them being
women,
children and the elderly. It also noted that its findings "underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation." Another independent peer-reviewed analysis of casualties was published in
The Lancet by Michael Spagat and other researchers. They estimated 75,200 violent deaths and 8,540 excess non-violent deaths between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025. The estimate of violent deaths is 34.7% higher than the GHM's casualty count at the time. Of the violent deaths, the researchers estimate that 56.2% were women, children, and elderly individuals.
Disinformation campaigns According to
information security experts interviewed by the
New York Times,
Iran,
Russia,
China, Iran's
proxies,
Al Qaeda and the
Islamic State have been conducting massive online
disinformation efforts focused on "[undercutting] Israel, while denigrating Israel's principal ally, the United States". A
Russian disinformation campaign known as
Doppelganger has pushed false information about the war using fake websites that mimic the appearance of news sources such as
Fox News,
Le Parisien and
Der Spiegel. In June 2024, Israel's
Ministry of Diaspora Affairs was revealed to have paid $2 million to Israeli political consulting firm
Stoic, to conduct a social media campaign, fueled by fake accounts and often employing misinformation, targeting 128 American Congresspeople, with a focus on
Democratic and
African-American members of the
House of Representatives. Websites were also created to provide young, progressive Americans with Gaza news with a pro-Israel spin. Among the objectives of the campaign was amplifying Israeli attacks on
UNRWA staffers and driving a wedge between Palestinians and African-Americans to prevent solidarity between the two groups. The campaign also took aim at people in
Canada, who were exposed to
Islamophobic content smearing
Canadian Muslims and implying that pro-Palestinian protesters aimed at imposing
Sharia law. Messages were also directed to people in the
Gulf Arab countries, arguing that humanitarian concern for Palestinians was a wasteful distraction from local affairs. In August 2025,
Xaviaer DuRousseau and other American and Israeli social media influencers went on a paid trip to Gaza by the
diaspora affairs ministry to film and share content from the distribution sites. According to
Haaretz, the aim of the campaign is to "reveal the truth" about the conditions in Gaza. DuRousseau stated on Twitter, "There is enough food at this aid base to feed every person in Gaza for at least a week, but the UN, Hamas, etc refuse to distribute the food efficiently. Instead, it sits here to spoil and be stolen. How’s that Israel’s fault?".
Other fake and misrepresented videos According to the
New York Times, many images and videos that circulate on
social media pretending to be from the Gaza war are in fact from other conflicts, such as the
Syrian civil war; and even of natural disasters, such as a
recent flood in Tajikistan. Pro-Hamas accounts and online personalities sympathetic to Russia and
Ba'athist Syria have also misrepresented footage from the
Syrian civil war as showing children being killed in Gaza. A video of a
CNN broadcast from near the
Israel-Gaza border with audio added to suggest the network had faked an attack went viral on social media. Videos falsely linked to the war included a video of children in cages posted on 4 October, footage from 2020 of Iranian lawmakers chanting "
Death to America", and photos of the
Cairo Tower in Egypt appearing to be lit with the
Palestinian flag spread on social media, which turned out to be a modified version of the tower in 2010. Footage from video game
Arma 3 has been presented as war footage. Social media users on both sides of the war shared
behind-the-scenes footage of an actor lying in fake blood from a 2022 Palestinian short film, alleging it was evidence that the other side was creating propaganda. An AI-generated video of model
Bella Hadid supposedly apologising for her past remarks and expressing support for Israel circulated on social media. During the early stages of the war, a video described as
"Hamas executes people by throwing them off a roof of a building!" was shared widely on social media. But the video did not depict Hamas, or any other group based in
Palestine, it was a misrepresented video of
ISIS in Iraq, from 2015.
Other false information Viral claims that the IDF had destroyed Gaza's
Church of Saint Porphyrius on 9 October were debunked by the church. Subsequently,
an Israeli airstrike hit the premises of the church on 19 October, killing 18. In October 2023, disinformation experts uncovered an account on X that published false reports about
Qatar threatening to cut off its gas exports if Israel continued to bombard the Gaza Strip. In November 2024, Palestinian financial expert and activist
Ramy Abdu falsely claimed that
Gazan Christians were collaborating with Israel to drop pro-Christian flyers from warplanes over Gaza, later deleting the post after it was debunked.
Claims by Israeli officials and army Public diplomacy of Israel The public diplomacy of Israel, known as
hasbara, is the country's efforts to communicate directly with citizens of other nations to inform and influence their perceptions, with the aim of garnering support or tolerance for the Israeli government's strategic objectives.
Hasbara was formally introduced to the
Zionist vocabulary by
Nahum Sokolow.
Hasbara () has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified". As it focuses on providing explanations about one's actions,
hasbara has been called a "reactive and event-driven approach". In 2003,
Ron Schleifer called
hasbara "a positive-sounding synonym for 'propaganda'". During the Gaza war, the
Israeli government and Israeli cyber companies have deployed
artificial intelligence (AI) tools and
bot farms to spread disinformation and graphic, emotionally charged and false propaganda. Writing for
openDemocracy, British academic
Paul Rogers stated, "Israel must maintain the pretence of an orderly war with few civilians killed. Netanyahu's government is lying, but it would be naive to expect otherwise. Lying is what many powerful states routinely do, particularly in wartime."
Misinformation and disinformation On multiple occasions, analyses have found issues with claims by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In October 2023, a
Financial Times analysis on a
bombing of Palestinians evacuating Gaza City found that "most explanations aside from an Israeli strike" could be ruled out, though the IDF blamed the attack on Palestinian militants. In October 2023, shortly after the
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, Israeli sources published audio purporting to show two Hamas militants in a phone call claiming responsibility for the act and blaming it on a malfunctioning rocket.
BBC and
CNN said they could not verify the recording. British
Channel 4 News reported on a
forensic analysis of the alleged Hamas operative audio released by the IDF, concluding that it was digitally manipulated. Two Arabic language journalists said that the recording did not appear authentic, because the "language, accent, dialect, syntax and tone" were not credible.
Channel 4 News also reported on a preliminary audio assessment performed by a sonic analysis company called Earshot, which concluded that the audio recording had been edited to fuse two channels that were recorded separately, one for each speaker. In November 2023, analysis by the
BBC found that a video released by the Israeli military following the
Al-Shifa Hospital siege had been edited despite IDF claims to the contrary. On 4 December 2023,
Haaretz reported on Israeli claims about beheaded babies, stating that these "unverified stories [had been] disseminated by
Israeli search and rescue groups,
army officers and even
Sara Netanyahu".
Haaretz journalists Nir Hasson and Liza Rozovsky related the chronology of the news items about "beheaded babies" and "hung babies" and concluded, "this story is false." directly contradicting the IDF. In January 2024, after an Israeli airstrike killed journalist
Hamza Dahdouh, the IDF called Dahdouh a "suspect" who was hit while driving with a "terrorist"; however,
The Washington Post found "no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day". After reports spread that
a mother and daughter were killed by Israeli snipers in December 2023 in a church where a number of
Palestinian Christians sheltered, the Israeli army denied targerting the compound. They claimed instead there was Hamas activity in its vicinity and Israeli soldiers shot back. Catholic officials and Member of British Parliament
Layla Moran, who maintained contact with refugees in the church, stated, on the contrary, that no Palestinian belligerents were in the area and that the two women had been killed by the Israeli army, who were the ones preventing the refugees from leaving. In November 2023, a video posted by the IDF showed
Daniel Hagari, inside the
Al-Rantisi Children's Hospital, where he claimed that the IDF had found Hamas weapons and technology, as well as a "list of terrorist names" in Arabic with the title "
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood", showing each agents' rota guarding the hostages. However, a translation of the document showed that it contained no names but instead a calendar of the days of the week. After the questioning of the veracity of the claim, an Israeli spokesperson backtracked, but CNN, while removing the segment, did not provide an editors' note acknowledging the change or the dispute over the initial video. In regards to the March 2024
Flour massacre, a
CNN investigation said that "
Mark Regev, the Israeli prime minister’s special adviser, initially told CNN that Israeli forces had not been involved." However the IDF said soon after that "soldiers had not fired directly on Palestinians seeking aid, but rather fired 'warning shots' in the air."
Al- Jazeera reported evidence of a "large number" of gunshot wounds from a United Nations team, medical professionals and witnesses. The
New York Times also reported that witness accounts differed from the Israeli military account who described extensive shooting after thousands massed around
aid trucks. IDF drone footage edits out the events causing the crowds to disperse and rejected a
CNN request for the full unedited footage. Several days after the attack, a senior crisis response adviser at
Amnesty International stated, "There is concrete evidence that contradicts whatever statements are being made by the Israeli authorities". After
bombing a tent camp in Rafah in an area that Israel had designated as a "
safe zone" for civilians, killing 45 people, Israeli officials initially told their American counterparts that they believed their airstrike ignited a nearby fuel tank, creating a large fire. In one video, an unnamed Gazan narrator said the explosion was caused by a "Hamas jeep loaded with weapons". Later, the IDF suggested that a militant warehouse containing ammunition or "some other material" in the area caused the fire. It also released an Arabic phone call in which they clearly say that the Israeli missile was not responsible for the fire, that the fire was caused by secondary explosions, and the secondary explosions came from an ammunition warehouse. However, James Cavanaugh, a specialist who worked at the
ATF, said the fire did not indicate "some giant stash that exploded." The
New York Times viewed numerous videos and did not find evidence that a significant secondary explosion was ignited. The Israeli army also denied responsibility for the killing of 5-year-old
Hind Rajab, her family and the
Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedics sent to rescue her, saying that their forces were not in firing range on the day of the girl's death. However, both
Al Jazeera and
The Washington Post concluded, based on investigation of satellite imagery, that Israeli armored vehicles were indeed in the area at the time. In March 2025, Israel
killed 15 paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and buried them in a mass grave along with their ambulances. The IDF initially claimed, "several vehicles were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights, or emergency signals, their movement was not co-ordinated in advance. Thus, IDF troops opened fire at the suspected vehicles." However, after video evidence emerged showing the ambulances were clearly marked and using both headlights and flashing emergency lights, the IDF called their initial account "mistaken." On 19 March 2025, Israel attacked a UN guest house in
Deir al-Balah, killing one UN worker. Israel initially denied having attacked the guest house, but subsequently admitted responsibility in April 2025. An investigation published by
+972 Magazine found that 3D animations of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran published by the Israeli army used existing visuals from third-party sources. An animation showing a supposed Hamas
command center under Al-Shifa Hospital had been previously used by the army prior to the war to claim there was a tunnel under an UNRWA school. An animation of the Mushtaha Tower used images published by the
Scottish Maritime Museum.
Unverified information In other instances, Israeli forces' claims have been questioned based on an apparent lack of evidence. In December 2023, Israel stated there was a Hamas tunnel network connected to the
Al-Shifa Hospital; however, a report by
The Washington Post found "There is no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards". Over the course of the war, repeated
Israeli attacks on hospitals were justified by the Israeli military's claims that the hospitals were used by militants. The
Associated Press, however, stated that after months of investigations, it found that Israel had provided "little or even no evidence" of a significant militant presence near the
al-Awda,
Indonesian, or
Kamal Adwan hospitals prior to their raids. In January 2024, Israel claimed that
12 UNRWA staff members had participated in the 7 October attack on Israel; however, the
Financial Times,
Sky News,
Channel 4, and other news outlets all stated that Israel's claims were not proven by the intelligence documents they reviewed. In February 2024, the IDF stated Hamas was stealing
humanitarian aid, leading
David M. Satterfield, a senior U.S. envoy, to say there was no evidence to support Israel's claims. In July 2024,
Bild and the
Jewish Chronicle published stories based on what they claimed were
internal Hamas documents, alleging that Hamas leader
Yahya Sinwar opposed a Gaza ceasefire and used negotiations as psychological warfare. The documents were later found to be fabricated, and four Israelis, including an aide to Netanyahu, were arrested for falsifying and distributing them. The fake documents also claimed Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and Israeli hostages through the
Philadelphi corridor into Egypt. At the time, Netanyahu was refusing to withdraw Israeli forces from the area and falsely claimed that Hamas, not Israel, was sabotaging ceasefire negotiations. In December 2024, the
New York Times reported that at least 24 UNRWA employees were members of Hamas or
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with most allegedly part of Hamas’s armed wing. The report was based on “secret Hamas military plans” that purportedly identified schools as strategic sites. The Times did not mention that prior allegations had been disproven, but acknowledged it could not verify the records, which were provided by the Israeli military, noting they resembled previous Hamas documents. When Drop Site News asked which documents the Times was referring to, they did not respond. UNRWA spokesperson Tamara Alrifai criticized the story, saying it fed into a narrative of UNRWA being a Hamas front, despite repeated debunking of such claims. She added, “UNRWA shares the lists/names of its staff in the occupied Palestinian territory with the government of Israel every single year, so it is astonishing that a country with some of the highest intelligence and military security in the world has not come back to a UN agency with concerns about staff until the war started.” == On the United Nations ==