Hybrid warfare in the Gaza Strip continues to escalate both on the battlefield and online, with fighting on the ground killing thousands and propaganda campaigns engaging millions of social media users.
After conducting weeks of intense airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas killing more than 1,400 Israelis and taking some 200 hostages, Israel launched an on-the-ground operation in Gaza on October 27.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims that Israeli airstrikes have killed 8,000 people, including 3,000 children. Israel disputes these numbers, claiming Hamas has been inflating them.
Viral posts on social media claim some scenes of death and carnage are fake.
Israel supporters on X are using the derogatory label “Pallywood” — a mix of the words “Palestine” and “Hollywood” — to claim that Palestinians are staging scenes of death and violence using so-called crisis actors to elicit global sympathy and win the PR war with Israel.
For example, on October 27, rose_k01, a blued-checked X user with an active subscription to the platform and more than 78,000 followers, shared a photomontage appearing to show three different men carrying the same child.
The caption to the rose_k01 post reads:
“Palestine Pallywood is running out [of] child actors Same Kid rescued over and over again.”
Another verified X user, ivgiz, who has nearly 167K followers, shared the same photomontage, with this caption in Hebrew:
“How many times has she been saved with the same clothes?”
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