Al-Jafarawi has been actively posting videos on Instagram since the start of the war to document what is happening on the ground in Gaza. But he got caught in the crosshairs of disinformation when pro-Israeli accounts started sharing videos showing an alleged Al-Jafarawi in a hospital bed one day, and walking the streets of Gaza the next.
The claim that Al-Jafarawi had faked an injury spread like wildfire, with official government profiles taking part in its circulation. Israel’s official X account also shared the story in two separate tweets, which it then deleted some hours later.
Hananya Naftali, who used to work under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of his digital communications team and is now a leading pro-Israeli influencer, also re-tweeted the viral video on October 26.
In Naftali’s post, two videos have been edited side-by-side. The video on the left depicts a man walking through rubble and has a green banner above it that reads “today”. On the right, a man lies in a hospital bed with an amputated leg while a red banner on the top of the video reads “yesterday”. Naftali called the video “Pallywood propaganda”, claiming the Palestinian man was “miraculously healed in one day” from Israeli strikes.
But the two videos are of two different men. The video on the left is of Al-Jafarawi, a Gazan YouTuber and singer. The video on the right is of Mohammed Zendiq, a young man who lost his leg after Israeli forces attacked the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank on July 24.
Though the claim has long been debunked by various news outlets, Naftali has not deleted his post. And claims about Al-Jafarawi have continued to spread.
“[Pallywood] is certainly a form of disinformation,” says Dr. Robert Topinka, a senior lecturer at Birkbeck University in London who has carried out extensive research on disinformation. “It’s being deliberately spread to confuse… It’s purposeful. Why else would it continue to be spread after it’s been so clearly debunked?”
Al-Jafarawi can still be seen in a compilation of photos aimed at discrediting his coverage of the war in Gaza. A mosaic with nine different photos purports to show Al-Jafarawi taking on different “roles”, but they are images from different dates, taken in different settings, and are not proof he is an actor, something French daily Libération has thoroughly fact-checked. The state of Israel reposted the compilation on November 6 and has not deleted it from its X account so far.
As for the misidentified Palestinian man who lost his leg, Zendiq, he has received an avalanche of online abuse. His family now fear for his life.
'Dilute', 'dehumanise' and 'undermine'
For Shakuntala Banaji, an expert on disinformation and media professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science who has been monitoring false claims online since the war broke out, Pallywood “is insult added to injury”.
“We don’t really need those kinds of false reports, since the accurate reporting is there,” says Banaji, referring to the journalists on the ground in Gaza. Though no foreign reporters have been allowed into Gaza and at least 53 journalists have been killed in the enclave according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, many are still risking their lives to document what is happening.
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https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231121-pallywood-propaganda-pro-israeli-accounts-online-accuse-palestinians-of-staging-their-suffering
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-are-social-media-giants-censoring-pro-palestine-voices
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and
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