Fact Check: These are not Egyptians carrying water to the people of Gaza, but smugglers

Egypt will not even hear of accepting refugees from Gaza, nor does it deliver humanitarian aid to the people there.

This does not prevent a heartbreaking clip from spreading on the social network of thousands of people with backpacks on their backs walking through the desert with a text saying that these are Egyptians carrying water for their Muslim brothers in Gaza.

Nothing like that actually exists.

The clip from Egypt was filmed before the start of the conflict, and the action takes place far from the Gaza Strip.

These are actually smugglers crossing the border with Libya.

However, the more interesting question is what is the purpose of another scam?

What do its authors achieve and why do they do it?

The new episode of the conflict in the Middle East has moved from the front to the digital battlefield. A wave of fake news and disinformation material flooded social networks. The palette is rich – from merciless strikes with destructive weapons to merciful gestures, BNT’s fact check points out.

Helicopter bombing in the Gaza Strip and people crossing the Egyptian border on foot to bring water and food to the people of Gaza. These are just a few of the fake stories that live a very real life on social networks. They are distinguished mostly by their emotionality.

Are Egyptians bringing food and water to the people of Gaza?

„Egyptians enter the Gaza Strip to bring water and food to the Palestinians there“ – a video with this text is being shared with great speed on social networks in our country and in various parts of the world. It shows many people carrying white backpacks.

However, a quick check shows that the same video appeared back in August on TikTok, when the first line of the new chapter of the Israel-Hamas conflict had not yet been written.

Moreover, the delivery of humanitarian aid, even just food and water, is not possible at this stage to the Gaza Strip through Egypt.

„They can’t go through because Israel has closed that border. This border crossing is closed. Even the Egyptian government was trying to convince the Israelis to let it in only for the humanitarian aid, just to get out various Palestinians who are sick, urgently need to enter the hospital. They didn’t let him in. Even he was attacked by the Israeli military aviation. These are fake things, footage from various reports edited in this way to mislead public opinion,“ said journalist Mohammed Khalaf.

In the same profile, we find more similar videos uploaded before the first strike, with the hashtag West Egypt, far from the border with Gaza. Videos of people with similar backpacks have also been posted on Youtube.

According to the added hashtags, people are not carrying water and food, they are smugglers.

And they do not cross the border with Gaza, but move in the direction of Libya.

„It works extremely on an emotional level. Most people read news, traveling somewhere, for work, they look on their phones for information that is easy to digest, easy to process and, as I said, it works extremely on an emotional level and the possibility that a person to connect with a community he feels closer to.Thus misinformation reaches a very wide mass and indeed this one, with this video, as purely humanly many people would like to see that there is help for those who are suffering, not to mention biases from a political or religious point of view, it is very easy to spread such information, as about Egypt,“ explained Ruslan Trad – a researcher from the Atlantic Council.

Are Hamas fighters shooting down a real helicopter?

Hamas fighters shoot down an Israeli helicopter gunship in the Gaza Strip. That’s the message being spread with a video shared in many countries and in multiple languages on social media.

The picture is again impressive and looks realistic, but only at first glance. A closer look at the footage clearly shows that it is animated. On Youtube we find the same video uploaded back in February of this year. The user on the social network identified it as part of the computer game Arma III.

„This footage from the game is extremely clear, you can see a bazooka being fired, a helicopter being shot down – footage that grabs attention and very often you don’t think about whether it’s real footage, although when you look more closely you can see that it’s not real footage it looks like it’s part of a video game you can see the processing and again I have to say that when this footage is distributed, in this case fake news and disinformation, software is involved, bots are involved that automatically distribute this content , so it is actually very difficult for us to stop misinformation from spreading without a good reaction on social networks, which again raises the question in recent years about moderation on social networks, how such trends can be stopped,“ Ruslan Trad pointed out.

„The danger comes in the social network TikTok because the audience there are teenagers, children and there they are attacked with a lot of false information from both the Israeli side and the Palestinian side and the Arab countries in general. The Iranians are entering this electronic war because they too they release a lot of information, a lot of fake videos. There should be stricter control,“ said Mohamed Khalaf.

According to experts, both sides benefit from disinformation. However, Hamas’s digital attack is more organized, and profiles, websites and even billboards are hacked to get messages where they need to be. In social networks, they often use fake profiles that automatically generate fake content.

„Disinformation benefits the warring parties, because the message is very often not for a domestic audience, but for rallying sympathy across the border of the conflict, and in the case of Hamas and Israel, many of the messages that are being spread are not in Arabic or Hebrew , and in multiple languages, including European languages. There are also a large number of fake profiles, especially on Twitter, that automatically generate content that is repeated thousands of times in order to reach as large an audience as possible. applies on both sides. In this case, Hamas also uses social networks extremely well, most often Telegram. Many users support Hamas and spread either contradictory information or pure disinformation,“ commented Ruslan Trad.

„There are no innocents. Everyone is currently using such propaganda, fake news, trolls, the networks are full of it. Every day there are new and new ones. Russia is the most active in this and let’s not forget China,“ said Mohamed Khalaf.

Conclusions:

Claims that Egyptians are bringing water and food to people in Gaza are manipulative because the video is from before the conflict began and is said to have been filmed in western Egypt.

The video of the downed helicopter does not show the downing of an Israeli machine. It’s not real, it’s part of a video game.

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