What We Know About Three Widespread Israel-Hamas War Claims

Since fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas militants on Oct. 7, misinformation about the war has circulated online. But a widely viewed and shared video supposedly correcting “three lies about Palestine” and “atrocity propaganda” being spread by Israel and its supporters also gets some of the facts wrong.

Social media platforms have hosted a flood of questionable information — some of it unverified and some of it intentionally misleading — since war broke out between Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7.

As of Oct. 12, according to the United Nations, more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals had died and at least 1,100 Palestinians had died in the fighting — many of them civilians on both sides.

We’ve written about some claims related to the war already. Below we’ll lay out what we know about three major issues that have been the subject of many false, misleading or unsubstantiated social media posts: Claims that Hamas beheaded babies, raped women, and killed hundreds of people at a music festival.

One video that’s been shared on Facebook and Instagram includes claims about all three issues, so we’ll use that as our example. The video is presented as though it is fact-checking the claims, but it gets some things wrong, and it presents assumptions as fact.