Israel Deletes Post Accusing Palestinians of Faking Their Deaths in Gaza

AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana

The Israeli government deleted a social media post accusing Palestinians of faking their own deaths in Gaza this week after the post received heavy backlash.

Israel’s official social media account on X, formerly known as Twitter, published a video supposedly showing a Palestinian corpse in a body bag moving on Monday, along with the caption, “Reminder: The Gaza Ministry of Health=Hamas… Bodies can’t move their heads.”

The post received more than 4.5 million views, 27,000 likes, and 7,800 reposts before it was eventually deleted on Wednesday.

“The official government account for Israel once again spread the Pallywood conspiracy theory which claims Palestinians are crisis actors performing for videos & faking their death,” reacted journalist Matt Binder on X. “They deleted it now but it already had been viewed more than 4.5 million times in the past two days.”

Astonishingly, the blunder took place just days after the official Israeli social media account deleted another post which claimed Palestinian civilians were faking their injuries from Israeli airstrikes.

As evidence, the account shared two videos purportedly of the same man. However it was quickly proven that the videos featured two different men.

In February, a similar fake news post purporting to show a moving body bag in Ukraine also went viral, receiving hundreds of thousands of views, before it was debunked by fact-checkers.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 8,000 people — the majority woman and children — have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the past month as part of Israel’s war on Hamas.