"Politics Today" reports that since Israel launched its war on Gaza in response to the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as "Operation Aqsa Flood" on October 7th, it has been waging another war on the internet, flooding social media with misinformation and fake news through propaganda campaigns led by false accounts employing deceit and lies to mislead global public opinion.
The site, through a report by Linda Shalash, noted that Western media institutions and heads of states have on more than one occasion repeated claims made by these accounts without verifying them, such as Israel's accusation that Hamas killed 40 Israeli children and beheaded them.
Alongside its ongoing war against Gaza, suddenly, dozens of fake online accounts emerged, relentlessly attacking Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.
The author, as a journalist and specialist in diplomacy and digital media, stated, "During times of war, there has been a random and unusual increase in the number of accounts on social media platforms, especially X-platform, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook."
According to the writer, some accounts appeared shortly before the war, but they all share common features such as assuming Arab or anonymous identities, placing Arab country flags alongside the Israeli flag, and repeating the same story.
Mossad and Pallywood
Shalash adds that the cyber warfare on fake accounts also includes those claiming affiliation with official Israeli entities, including a Mossad-linked account on the "X-platform" with over 100,000 followers, which was uncovered as fraudulent by Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist specialized in online misinformation for the BBC's monitoring service.
The ongoing war also revived the use of "Pallywood," a term crafted from "Palestine" and "Hollywood," used by Israel for years to tarnish Palestinian narratives by alleging that Palestinian suffering is cinematic pretense. Indeed, a hashtag spread during the war accuses Palestinians of faking their deaths and injuries in Gaza.
Organized Electronic Campaigns
In this context, an investigation by "Innovative Contractors for Advanced Dimensions," specializing in open-source intelligence, revealed the reality of many digital accounts attacking the Palestinian resistance and criticizing the Aqsa Flood operation.
The investigation, conducted in October 2023, found that organized electronic committees are behind these accounts, which repeat phrases and use the same emojis across various digital platforms to create a fictitious public opinion.
These fictitious accounts operate under the supervision of organized committees or a particular party, reminiscent of "Hasbara," the Hebrew term meaning propaganda and deceit. It serves as a synonym for public relations and is a program to spread Israeli political propaganda globally with significant government and security support, often targeting Western political elites, opinion leaders, and the general public.
