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When Journalists Spread Social Media Disinformation to Attack Israel
Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip, March 5, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Al-Basos
News consumers were told about inflammatory leaflets that Israel dropped on Gaza last Wednesday night.
According to reports by ABC and the The Telegraph, the leaflets stated that “The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza vanish.” An online post by a Washington Post columnist charged that the flyer constitutes “genocidal intent.”
Their evidence? Social media said so.
It might not be a surprise, then, that the two news outlets later walk backed their claims, while the Post columnist, Shadi Hamid, quietly deleted his post on X.com.
The ABC article now opens with an editors’ note: “An earlier version of this article said that the IDF had dropped leaflets with disturbing messaging. ABC News has not been able to confirm the authenticity of these leaflets. The IDF denies dropping these leaflets.”
CORRECTION: Earlier report of leaflets with disturbing message in Gaza cannot be confirmed; the IDF has denied dropping them.https://t.co/w6noxC1Amn
— ABC News (@ABC) March 20, 2025
The Telegraph, too, deleted its claim. Its piece now states, “It was reported earlier that Israel had dropped leaflets on Gaza,” and that “The IDF has denied this.”
Not only did Israeli officials deny the authenticity of the leaflet, but the photo shared by so many social media users, of a leaflet purportedly dropped over the last week in Gaza, was the exact same photo posted a month ago. And already then, Israel had denied responsibility for the leaflet.
The media retractions didn’t come in time to stop the spread. Haaretz, for example, extensively quoted from ABC’s own extensive quotes of the flyer. (It later added a paragraph reporting on the ABC editor’s note, but it didn’t change its text and didn’t acknowledge that ABC had actually withdrawn its claim.)
Meanwhile, the claim was echoed in the British Parliament. During a March 20 debate at the House of Commons, Conservative Party politician Kit Malthouse told his peers: “Of course it’s been reported that leaflets were dropped across Gaza last night threatening extermination.” And yet another echo, as the media then reported on Malthouse’s charges.
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Israel did drop a different leaflet over Gaza –the standard variety calling on Palestinians in a combat zones to evacuate for their own safety. Ironically, even as Israel was attacked as dropping a leaflet it didn’t drop, Al Jazeera accused the country of failing to drop the leaflets that it did, in fact, drop.
Echoes of Amsterdam
This is hardly the first time the media rushed to accept and amplify anti-Israel disinformation from social media.
As Jews and Israelis were being attacked in Amsterdam last November, an anonymous X.com user posted video purportedly showing “an Amsterdam taxi driver attacked and abused” by Israelis.
His allegation was echoed not only by a collection of anti-Israel social media users (including a Guardian columnist) — but also by the Dutch media network RTL News. From RTL, it spread to USA Today, Reuters, Yahoo News, the Jewish Chronicle, and others.
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The viral clip was scrubbed of its audio. As it had to be — in the unedited footage, the attackers are heard shouting “Palestine!” while the victims, after picking themselves up from the ground, speak to each other in Hebrew. In other words, this wasn’t an attack by Israelis on taxi drivers but the opposite: An assault against Israelis by taxi drivers.
Instead of filtering out social media’s disinformation about anti-Jewish violence, journalists worked to spread it. (To be fair, it was also journalists who exposed RTL’s falsehood.)
Other bad actors on social media posted a mistranslated clip that they falsely claimed showed Israelis in Amsterdam singing gleefully about child casualties in Gaza. As with the mischaracterized clip of the assault, the purpose was to justify the Amsterdam “Jew hunt.” And here, too, news outlets that have elsewhere warned about social media disinformation acted to uncritically spread it. The New York Times, the Guardian, and others told their readers about the non-existent video. Only after CAMERA challenged them to produce evidence did they admit they had seen no such footage.
Social media will inevitably be used as an accelerant for misinformation. Responsible journalism would help stop the spread — if only that were inevitable.
Gilead Ini is a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA, the foremost media watchdog organization focused on coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The post When Journalists Spread Social Media Disinformation to Attack Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Series About Dutch Jewish Woman in Nazi-Occupied Amsterdam Premieres at Venice Film Festival
Venice, 82nd Venice International Film Festival 2025 – Day 7, Photocall for the film “Etty.” Pictured are Hagai Levi – Director, Julia Windischbauer, Sebastian Koch, Claire Bender, and Leopold Witte. Photo: Pool Photo Events 06IPA/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A six-part television series inspired by the true story of a Dutch Jewish woman who wrote diaries and letters in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam made its world premiere out of competition on Sunday at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.
The Dutch and German-language drama series “Etty” is from Emmy Award-winning Israeli director and creator Hagai Levi, the visionary behind “The Affair,” “Our Boys,” and the remake of Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage,” which he premiered four years ago at the Venice Film Festival. Levi also created the Israeli television series “BeTipul,” which was remade around the world as “In Therapy” and “In Treatment.” He attended the “Etty” premiere at Venice with the show’s cast, including lead stars Julia Windischbauer and Sebastian Koch.
“Etty” is inspired by the life and diaries of Dutch-Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, who chronicled for 18 months her experiences living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. She refused to go into hiding and wrote from Amsterdam as well as the Westerbork transit camp. She was deported and murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 at age 29. Her diary entries and letters were published in 1979 and have gained global recognition. They have since been published in 18 languages.
“In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, 27-year-old Jewish Etty Hillesum begins therapy,” reads a synopsis of the series “Etty,” provided by the Venice Film Festival. “What starts as personal exploration becomes a spiritual awakening, documented in her diaries. Guided by psycho-chirologist Julius Spier, her mentor and lover, she undergoes a radical inner transformation. She’ll discover that even when all is taken, one can remain free within.”
Levi said he discovered a book about Hillesum’s diaries roughly 10 years ago and “after breathless reading, I felt I had found something I could talk about for the rest of my life.” He explained that Hillesum’s diary entries also helped him during his own personal journey and exploration of his Jewish faith.
“I grew up a pious Orthodox Jew. At 20, I left that world forcefully, violently, abandoning questions of God, faith, and meaning,” he said in a director’s statement shared by the festival. “I tried to fill the resulting void — and depression that came with it — with work, ambition, success; mostly in vain. Hillesum offered another option: a different religiosity, a new sense of faith, beyond institutional religion.”
Levi added that at the center of Hillesum’s diary “is a leap: from a neurotic, self-absorbed woman to someone with deep autonomy. That process is accelerated by the threat she faces as a Jewish woman … At some point, she knows that even when everything is taken from her — her home, her freedom, even her life — she still has an inner core that can’t be lost.”
The award-winning director noted that the messages shared in Hillesum’s diaries are still relevant and must be shared, “especially after the horrors that shake the world of so many, over the past two years,” which may be a reference to the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
He said Hillesum’s “rejection of hatred, solidarity with the unprivileged, and inner freedom have brought solace and meaning to countless readers over the 44 years since her diaries were published,” including the filmmaker himself.
“Above all, this is a love story: the love of a young woman for the man who awakened her soul, and out of that awakening — a love for life, God, and all humankind,” he said in conclusion.
Watch the trailer for “Etty” below.
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Israeli President to Meet Pope Leo at the Vatican on Thursday
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
Israeli President Isaac Herzog will travel to the Vatican on Thursday to meet Pope Leo, who has recently stepped up his calls for an end to the war in Gaza.
The one-day visit is being made at the invitation of the pope, Herzog’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.
The president will also meet Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican‘s chief diplomat, and tour the Vatican Archives and Library, it added.
“Central to their meetings will be the efforts to secure the release of the hostages, the fight against global antisemitism, and the safeguarding of Christian communities in the Middle East, alongside discussions on other political matters,” the presidency said.
Leo, the first US pope, last week issued a “strong appeal” for an to end to the nearly two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas, calling for a permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages held in Gaza, and the provision of humanitarian aid.
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Iran Warns US Missile Demands Block Path to Nuclear Talks
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani speaks after meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
The path to nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States is not closed but US demands for curbs on Iranian missiles are obstructing prospects for talks, a senior Iranian official said on Tuesday.
A sixth round of Iran-US talks was suspended after the start of a 12-day war in June, in which Israel and the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities and Iran retaliated with waves of ballistic missiles against Israel.
“We indeed pursue rational negotiations. By raising unrealizable issues such as missile restrictions, they set a path that negates any talks,” the secretary of Iran‘s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said in a post on X.
Western countries fear Iran‘s uranium enrichment program could yield material for an atomic warhead and that it seeks to develop a ballistic missile to carry one.
Iran says its nuclear program is only for electricity generation and other civilian uses and that it is enriching uranium as fuel for these purposes.
It has denied seeking to create missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads and says its defense capabilities cannot be open to negotiation in any talks over its atomic program.
Larijani’s comments follow last week’s launch by France, Germany, and Britain of a “snapback mechanism” that could reimpose UN sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program.
The three countries, also known as the E3, have urged Iran to engage in nuclear negotiations with the US, among other conditions, in order to have the imposition of the snapback sanctions delayed for up to six months.