LONDON/DOHA: Proving that truth is the first casualty of war, the tragic loss of life at the Gaza hospital seems to have weaponised the fact-checking conducted by different media outlets.
While the denials of responsibility and deleted social media posts arouse suspicion around Israel’s view of the attack, much remains unclear about the strike that Palestinian authorities say killed hundreds.
In the following passage, effort has been made to glance through the fact-checking undertaken by BBC, Al Jazeera, New York Times, US magazine Wired and the Sailing Anarchy Forums to reach the truth about the hospital attack. According to the BBC, the explosion at the hospital happened at around 19:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Tuesday. A 20-second video which circulated on social media purporting to show the blast was the first significant piece of visual evidence to emerge of the incident. Live footage from the Al-Jazeera media network aired at 18:59 local time showed a bright light rising in the skies above Gaza. It flashes twice before drastically changing direction, and it then explodes. An explosion is then seen on the ground far away, followed by a much larger explosion closer to the camera, which the BBC has geolocated. Some commentators have suggested it is from a rocket which appears to explode or disintegrate. We contacted 20 think tanks, universities and companies with weapons expertise, so far only six have responded and their findings are inconclusive.
BBC reporter Rushdi Abualouf has been to the Al-Ahli Hospital. Pathologist Derrick Pounder, a founder member of Physicians for Human Rights in the UK and an expert in the field of conflict injuries, viewed some of the images. “The overall pattern of scattered injuries is expected from shrapnel resulting from an explosion,” he said. But he also said it was not possible to clearly make out all of the injuries in the limited number of verified images available.
One of the most critical pieces of evidence is the nature of the crater left behind by the explosion. There appeared to be an inconsistency in the Israeli briefing regarding where the rocket they believed caused the blast was fired from. The spokesman said it had been fired from a cemetery next to the hospital. But a map displayed by the spokesman showed a launch site further away. We have not been able to locate a cemetery there, the BBC concluded.
Al Jazeera reports in the hours after the attack, Israel, the official Israeli account on X (formerly Twitter), posted a video it claimed was proof that the explosion was the result of a misguided rocket launched by Islamic Jihad militants. But within minutes, Aric Toler, a former Bellingcat researcher who now works for The New York Times, pointed out that the time stamp on the video showed 8 pm local time, a full hour after the explosion took place. The post on Israel’s official account was subsequently edited to remove the video while maintaining its claim that the attack was not the result of an Israeli strike.
Al Jazeera reports, that in the hours after the attack, Israel, the official Israeli account on X (formerly Twitter), posted a video it claimed was proof that the explosion was the result of a misguided rocket launched by Islamic Jihad militants.
Regarding the death toll, the American intelligence agencies have assessed that between 100 and 300 people were killed, US officials said Thursday. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that it could change.
On the night of the explosion, the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry put the toll at 500 or more dead, which it later changed to “hundreds.” No figure could be confirmed independently, but images from the hospital verified by The Times and witness accounts made clear that it was high.
The next morning, the Israeli military said the number of casualties reported by Hamas was inflated, citing intelligence without elaborating. The Gazan health ministry said later on Wednesday that 471 people had been killed and hundreds more injured. Those figures could not be independently confirmed.
Fact-checking and open source investigations have long been seen as a way to hold platforms accountable by debunking disinformation that spreads unchecked on social media, but the Israel-Hamas war has shown how the language of OSINT investigators has been co-opted by self-interested parties, says Caroline Orr, a behavioural scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland who tracks disinformation online. “I think one of the most disturbing aspects of studying disinformation is when you realize that even fact-checking has become weaponized,” Orr wrote on X. “Most people don’t care about the truth about the hospital being bombed; they just care about finding a truth to use against the other side.”