AFP Fact Check has revealed an extensive campaign of fabricated posts spreading across Arabic-language social media platforms. These posts falsely alleged arrests of Israeli officers in Europe and misrepresented unrelated international videos as if they depicted scenes inside Israel, with the aim of fueling anti-Israel propaganda.
One widely circulated post asserted that Dutch authorities had arrested an Israeli armored corps officer accused of war crimes in Gaza. The post was accompanied by a dramatic image of a man in handcuffs surrounded by security officers.
In reality, the man pictured was not Israeli at all but an Irish gang member who had been arrested in Spain in 2022 on charges of money laundering. AFP traced the image to multiple European news outlets from that year, showing that it had been lifted from its original context and repurposed to falsely implicate Israel.
A second claim spread rapidly online, alleging that a senior Israeli officer was detained in Britain on accusations related to Gaza. Again, the claim collapsed under scrutiny. The so-called “evidence” turned out to be an AFP photo from 2015 showing a German police officer who had been tried for murder in a notorious cannibalism case. Despite the shocking nature of the original crime, the image was stripped of its background and circulated with captions suggesting that it showed the arrest of an Israeli official. AFP confirmed that there were no credible reports of Israeli officers being arrested in the UK.
A third falsehood took the form of a video said to show a psychiatric hospital in Tel Aviv bursting with patients in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack. The video was shared widely, often with captions suggesting that Israeli society was collapsing under mass psychological breakdown. AFP’s investigation revealed a different reality: the footage had been filmed in Mexico, at Hospital General No. 1 in Aguascalientes, a government-run hospital where local journalists had documented chronic overcrowding weeks before the video appeared in Arabic-language posts. AFP reporters on the ground in Mexico verified the hospital setting, confirming the falsity of the Tel Aviv claim.
These cases of fake news are part of a broader pattern of misinformation campaigns aimed at spreading disinformation about Israel. Last month, another viral case centered on five-year-old Osama al-Rakab. Posts claimed that Israel was starving him, using his photograph as supposed evidence. In reality, al-Rakab suffers from a severe genetic illness unrelated to the war. According to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Israel coordinated his transfer from Gaza with his family, and he is now receiving treatment in Italy. COGAT emphasized that while tragic images can stir emotion, their misuse for propaganda distorts the truth.
This theme of misrepresentation was further highlighted in mainstream media. The New York Times, in a July 2025 report, featured the story of 18-month-old Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, describing him as suffering from malnutrition. Days later, the newspaper issued a clarification, acknowledging that the child’s medical records showed pre-existing health conditions. The correction came after criticism, including from former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who accused the newspaper of fueling a “blood libel” by omitting critical context. The Times admitted it updated its story to add detail on his condition after being informed by the treating hospital.
This pattern was already visible at the start of the war. Less than a week after Hamas invaded Israel, NBC News uncovered a propaganda network of 67 accounts on the X social platform that are coordinating a campaign of posting false, inflammatory content related to the Israel-Hamas war.
One widely shared photo showed a man in his undergarments, claimed to be Israeli General Nimrod Aloni, captured by Hamas. Within hours, the IDF released photos of Aloni attending briefings, disproving the rumor. Another fabricated video depicted children in chicken coops, which was claimed to show Israeli hostages, but was found to have been uploaded online days before the war even began. Other false videos included recycled clips from video games and footage of Azerbaijani police presented as if it were Israeli officers.
Taken together, these examples show how fabricated content can quickly gain traction once stripped of context and repackaged for social media audiences. The posts garnered tens of thousands of shares, likes, and comments, amplifying falsehoods that portrayed Israel as both criminally liable abroad and socially unstable at home. These reports demonstrate that these pieces of content are not isolated errors but part of a broader wave of misleading information targeting Israel in the Arabic-speaking online sphere.