We need to be far more sceptical of Hamas’s propaganda

Nobody could fail to be moved by the images from Gaza this week, of a man on a bed in a hospital-overspill tent burning to death from a fire caused by an IDF air strike. There is something viscerally impactful about the idea of burning alive.

As ever in war, it is important to take a step back from the emotion of horror. We must assess calmly and impartially, particularly in a conflict where almost every video and picture is filtered through the lens of the combatants.

Most people will simply have been gripped by the horror of the footage. But others leapt on this incident as proof of what they already believed about the conflict in Gaza. Guardian columnist Owen Jones shared a post featuring a video of several explosions, condemning the ‘pilots who burn dozens of children’. Jeremy Corbyn expressed his horror and called for an end to arming Israel.

The initial reports from ‘pro-Palestine’ propaganda sites claimed that the tent fire was evidence of a ‘horrific massacre’ outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in northern Gaza, which killed a ‘massive number of martyrs’. The internet reported that children were burning alive.

Soon afterwards, Médecins Sans Frontières reported that five people had died in the explosions, with a further 65 wounded – but no children. This was corroborated by credible open-source reporting. As ever, the propaganda accounts were wrong, but their false narrative beat the truth to the punch.

The video drawing the most attention featured Saleh Al Jafarawi, or ‘Mr FAFO’, a Hamas reporter par excellence. Jafarawi manages to pop up every time an incident of note occurs anywhere in Gaza. His video of this event is full of edits, studio lights and emoting. As soon as Jafarawi’s presence at the scene was identified, there was a concerted campaign from his fellow propagandists to assure us that he is ‘just a famous YouTuber and filmmaker’ rather than part of Hamas’s propaganda arm. (Hamas’s control over the media in Gaza is legendary. It is inconceivable that an independent journalist would be allowed to film whatever he pleases.)

The IDF’s explanation for the fire was that it targeted a Hamas command centre in the hospital car park with a precise strike. This caused a fire, ‘most likely from secondary explosions’, possibly from munitions.

Of course, you won’t see any of these secondary explosions in Jafarawi’s edited video. But they were clearly visible and audible in some of the footage shared on social media. Unfortunately, these videos were mass reported to X for supposedly breaching its terms, and the algorithm has now removed many of them.

It is a matter of record that Hamas uses hospitals in Gaza for military purposes. We have witness testimony, videos of hostages in Gazan hospitals on 7 October and videos of rocket-propelled grenades being fired by Hamas militants from hospitals. In March, the IDF’s second raid on the Al-Shifa hospital uncovered hundreds of Hamas operatives. It is not outlandish to suggest this could also be the case for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

None of this changes the fact that a man was burnt alive. But this was not the deliberate massacre of children by fire that many portrayed it as. We know that Hamas’s propagandists tried to cover up the truth about secondary explosions. And we know that it uses hospitals to hide among civilians. Hamas has a track record of putting innocent people in harm’s way.

All this begs the question of why Western critics of Israel are not condemning Hamas for this incident. It is a war crime for combatants to use hospitals for military purposes. It is not a war crime to strike those combatants, no matter how unpleasant the damage, as long as a proper targeting process was followed that duly considered possible collateral harm.

We do not yet know if the IDF’s strike was proportionate or not. But that has not stopped the Twitterati from once again condemning Israel, taking the opportunity to demand that Israel cease fire and lose the war, based on only the emotional horror engendered by edited footage on social media.

This reliance on emotions is the single greatest problem with the discourse around this conflict. Appalling things happen in war. But we cannot assess proportionality or legality based on our feelings of horror alone.

This incident teaches us a lesson: we cannot trust a single video coming out of Gaza. Almost everything we see is manipulated propaganda.

Andrew Fox is a writer and researcher specialising in defence.