A PHOTO THAT depicts a person wrapped in a shroud like a corpse, but who can be seen using their phone, has been shared thousands of times with captions that suggest death tolls from Gaza are unreliable.
However, the photo has no connection with Gaza; it was taken in Thailand and shows a child’s Halloween costume.
“When the ‘Gaza Ministry of Health’ tells you how many casualties there are…” a number of posts – including on Irish accounts – sharing the image on the social media platforms X and Facebook say, implying deaths in Gaza are fabricated.
One such post has been viewed more than 619,500 times, according to X’s statistics.
“One of Gaza’s crisis actors got bored pretending to be a dead child killed by Israel”, another post on X, viewed more than 21,000 times says.
“Side note- isn’t it incredible how many days his phone battery is lasting? Considering Gaza claims to be without electricity.”
Atop the image, a Hebrew logo can be seen for an “official channel”, however the name of the channel is cut-off.
However, the image is not from Gaza, but was shared online before the recent series of attacks in Israel and Gaza. The photo was traced back to Halloween celebrations in Thailand last year.
The Indian outlet NewsMobile was able to source the photo back to Facebook posts that had gone viral in 2022, in which a parent shared ideas for simple but effective costumes they put together for their children.
The original post shows the same costume used in the X posts, but from various different angles, and with no mention of the Israel-Gaza conflict. There is also no Hebrew watermark over the original images.
The Gaza health ministry, which is controlled by the Islamist militant group Hamas, has been accused of inflating casualty figures during the conflict with Israel, notably in the aftermath of an explosion at the al-Ahli hospital last month.
However, videos from other countries, photos from protests, and behind-the-scenes footage from movies, have been used to claim that Palestinians are faking evidence of casualties in Gaza.
Verdict
Misleading. The photo of a Halloween’s costume in Thailand last year has been misleadingly cited as evidence that Palestinians are faking images of casualties.
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