SHAH ALAM – Over the past weeks, as timelines on social media platforms are flooded with the reality of the brutality of the Israeli forces towards Palestinians, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have also posted their ‘exposé’ of what they have encountered while invading the Gaza land.
However, their series of ‘exposé’ had constantly being thwarted and revealed as fake, which caused an uproar among social media users.
Here is the list of IDF’s oops-a-daisies which have been circulated so far:
Babies and toddlers were found with heads decapitated in Kzar Afa
In the news published on CNN, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Tal Henrich said that babies and toddlers were found with their 'heads decapitated' in Kfar Aza in southern Israel after the Hamas’ operation in the kibbutz on Oct 7.
The claims blew up when a reporter with Tel Aviv-based news channel i24 Nicole Zedeck said during a live broadcast that she had spoken to Israeli soldiers who had witnessed the decapitated babies.
United States (US) president Joe Biden had first confirmed seeing the picture of Hamas beheading children but later retracted the statement, saying that the president and administration have not seen pictures or verified reports of children beheaded by Hamas.
Fake doctor from Al-Shifa Hospital
A video of a female ‘doctor’ who claimed to be from Al-Shifa Hospital posted a video of herself warning the people of Gaza that Hamas had taken over the entire hospital including the food and medicine.
The woman, who was dressed in a clean white coat, claimed that she had to fix a fracture for a five-year-old boy but had nothing to treat the boy with since it was all taken by Hamas fighters.
Since the video circulated, it has been widely criticised as the woman looked too ‘clean’ for a warzone hospital besides speaking in English in a video meant to address the locals with Israeli accent.
Staff from Al-Shifa had also confirmed that they had never seen the woman before.
Later, a post went viral saying that the woman was believed to be an Israeli actress named Hannah Abutbul.
‘Evidence’ videos of Hamas base in a hospital
In a video posted on the IDF’s social media account, an IDF army was seen showing what it claimed to be the Hamas operational base in a hospital.
In the video, he showed that the IDF found a laptop with ‘incriminating evidence’, a backpack, tactical radio, landline and several discs which he claimed to be found in the hospital’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) room.
Also seen in the video was that the laptop was fully charged and there was a charger with ‘QI-148’ written on it. QI-148 actually matched the IDF IT team's standardised labeling system.
Social media users had called out on the IDF, questioning about the label on the charger and how Hamas could have operated in the MRI room as no metals could ever be in the same room as the machine.
The laptop was also believed to have been the IDF’s own laptop as evidence against Hamas as it uses a ‘type M’ plug which was used by Israel.
The video had since been deleted and replaced with the same video which was cut shorter and the laptop screen as well as charger were blurred out.
‘Evidence’ of Hamas base with fighters’ shift schedule under Rantisi hospital
The IDF had posted a video of what it claimed to be a ‘Hamas base’ under Rantisi hospital but the tunnel shown in the video was later identified as an elevator.
In the video posted, it could be clearly seen that it had rails, cables and a pit ladder.
The video showed what was inside the ‘tunnel’ with guns and ammunition as well as a motorcycle.
The camera panned across a dark room before showing the man pointing to a piece of paper stuck on the wall with Arabic words written in a table-form. The man claimed that it was Hamas' shift schedule.
The public who were able to read Arabic quickly pointed out that the list had zero names but it was actually a calendar with the names of the days of the week in Arabic.
‘Pretend’ kindness
In 2015, IDF published PR photos of its soldier serving water to an old Palestinian woman Ghalia Abu Reda. She was then executed at close range after the picture was taken and published.
Recently, the IDF again shared photo of one of its army helping an elderly Palestinian man, but the man was shot and killed right after the photo was taken.