At six a.m. on Saturday Oct.7, Israeli civilians were awoken to the sounds of missiles indiscriminately fired by Hamas, a US-sanctioned terrorist organization that controls the Gaza strip. Innocent men, women and children ran for bomb shelters. Simultaneously, Hamas terrorists began an invasion by land, air, and sea. As misinformation involving the war cycles online, it is important to have all of the facts straight.
Breaking through the Gaza border in Southern Israel, terrorists forcibly entered, massacring 1,400+ people, most of whom were defenseless civilians. Victims include individuals with disabilities, babies in their cribs, and elderly. About 200 hostages were taken back into Gaza. In addition to Israeli civilians, as many as 20 American citizens and several other foreign nationals are currently being held hostage in Gaza. Images released by Hamas on Telegram have confirmed shootings, gang rape and other disturbing desecrations of civilians.
Kfar Aza is one of the communities that experienced the horrific Hamas onslaught on Oct. 7. A number of communities were targeted, including Be’eri, Ofakim, Kfar Aza, Sderot, Yated, Kissufim and Urim. In Kibbutz Kfar Aza, IDF Major General Itai Veruv told CNN; “Some people came out with their children and [Hamas attackers] killed them. They killed babies in front of their parents and then killed the parents. They killed parents and we found babies between the dogs and their families killed before him.”
Young adults at the Super Nova music festival, who were originally attending a music festival celebrating peace and the Jewish Holiday of Sukkot in Israel’s Negev Desert became victims to the deadliest concert massacre in history. The IDF estimates that there were at least 260 murdered, and dozens of hostages abducted. “People were panicking,” 28 year old attendee Yoni Diller told Rolling Stone. “Suddenly we see this car bumping into another car very slowly. The door opens, and we see a wounded girl. Someone shot her in the leg, and her whole left knee was disconnected from her body. She couldn’t brake. Her knee was shot. We tried to help her [and] give her water. She was dying in front of our eyes.”
Hamas is a Sunni Islamist terrorist organization that has served as the government of the Gaza Strip since 2007, when Hamas overthrew rival faction Fatah (also known as the Palestinian Authority) in Gaza. Hamas was named one of the richest terror organizations by Forbes in 2018. According to The Times leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has an estimated fortune of about 4 billion dollars while many Gazans struggle to survive. Hamas not only uses humanitarian aid to fund their own leaders’ lavish lifestyles, but also to manufacture and purchase terror weapons, such as bombs and missiles intended to harm Israeli civilians.
Hamas funding goes towards terror instead of building schools, hospitals, and providing clean water to civilians. Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, placing their meeting spots in tunnels under densely populated schools and hospitals, a war crime. It is important to remember that Hamas does not act in the best interest of it’s own people. In the Hamas Charter, it states: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)”. According to their own charter, Hamas is not a group of “freedom fighters” but rather a group of genocidal terrorists.
As Israel prepares for a land invasion of northern Gaza in order to neutralize the terrorists, the country has called for a civilian evacuation from Gaza City into the south. The IDF dropped pamphlets from the sky in Gaza, urging citizens to evacuate. Critics of Israel have called this event an “ethnic cleansing” despite the nation’s promise that this evacuation is temporary. In a live briefing, IDF Spokesperson Jonathan Conricus states that an estimated 500,000 Israelis have been displaced and evacuated from their homes. A temporary evacuation is not an ethnic cleansing, but rather a humane attempt in saving civilian lives. The IDF has released geo-confirmed images that Hamas has set up roadblocks, making it difficult for Gazan civilians to evacuate.
According to NBC, the Technology Transparency Project has found that Hamas has utilized premium accounts on social media platform X in order to spread propaganda videos. Additionally, researchers have found multiple accounts pushing misinformation related to the war. “My biggest worry is the offline consequence,” senior director of digital justice at Free Press Nora Benavidez, told NBC. “Real people will suffer more because they are desperate for credible information quickly. They soak in what they see from platforms, and the platforms have largely abandoned and are in the process of abandoning their promises to keep their environments healthy.” As misinformation continues to dominate social media platforms, the rate of hate crimes continues to soar. According to Reuters, France has been put on its highest security alert after a teacher was killed in an Islamist attack and bomb alerts forced the evacuation of the Louvre museum. In Illinois, a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy to was stabbed to death by his Islamophobic landlord. Additionally, Jewish schools in London closed over the weekend after a recorded increase of 400% in antisemitic incidents.
As the war moves forward, it has become abundantly clear that journalists and consumers of media alike share a responsibility to listen, to research, and to fact-check sources.
