In continuation of previous reports revealing Israeli propaganda campaigns that accuse Palestinians of fabricating scenes of their deaths during the ongoing war on Gaza, this report by Misbar details a propaganda campaign that used various techniques and social media pages to cast doubt on the credibility of scenes depicting Palestinian deaths and injuries.
GAZAWOOD Is a Campaign Parallel to Pallywood
A month after the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, new accounts have emerged on social media platforms promoting a different campaign alongside the existing Pallywood campaign. Among these is an account called GAZAWOOD.
The posts on this page support the claim that these scenes are faked and that there are no real Palestinian deaths or injuries. The page's main argument—that Palestinians are exaggerating the number of fatalities and injuries—is supported by various deceptive strategies, including satire and technological manipulations, such as altering video speed or camera angles, or removing videos from their context.
What Is the GAZAWOOD Campaign?
It is a series of accounts that promoted a new hashtag similar to the satirical hashtag “Pallywood”. Pallywood is a term that combines the words “Palestine” and “Hollywood” to question the authenticity of images and videos documenting Israeli violence and Palestinian suffering, claiming that they are “staged and fabricated”.
The hashtag “GAZAWOOD” is a new one, replacing the word Palestine with the word Gaza to serve the same purpose. The main difference between the two campaigns is that “Pallywood” is an old campaign that has been promoting Israeli propaganda since around 2017, while “GAZAWOOD” is relatively new and coincides with the current war on Gaza.
Re-Promoting Misleading Israeli Claims
These pages are clearly re-promoting false claims, many of which have already been debunked, or similar, misleading claims in new ways. For example, they are re-promoting the false claim that Palestinian bodies move in the shrouds that people photograph during funerals, in order to promote claims that Palestinians are staging death scenes and falsifying casualty figures.
Propagandists deliberately manipulate videos to focus on certain angles that serve misleading purposes, such as obscuring the body’s surroundings or people around it, elements that could explain why the shroud moved. These edits clearly indicate that the claims are false, as the use of techniques such as extreme close-ups on the shroud can distort the reality of the scene and present a distorted image. It is clear that the goal of the edits is to create an impression that serves the misleading narrative while concealing evidence that could explain the facts correctly.
The Scene Is Fake, Look at Their Laughter!
The campaign follows a strategy of diverting attention from the actual event and trying to distort the truth of what is really happening by directing the viewers’ attention to secondary details that often surround the video but are of little importance compared to the essence of the event.
A common tactic used by the campaign is to focus on the impressions of people around the incident, such as laughter or other emotions, in order to cast doubt on the footage and claim that it is staged. Recently, the campaign admins pinned to the top of their page a video that has been interacted with by thousands of people. The video shows tragic scenes of a person screaming as he shows the charred remains of his loved ones.
The page admins deliberately highlighted brief moments showing the faces of people around the bereaved person without focusing on the person himself and his apparent feelings of sadness. They claimed that those around the scene were laughing, but linking their emotions, the causes of which are difficult to pinpoint in a very short time, to the reality of the actual event and inflating their significance by slowing down the clip is clearly misleading. Regardless of whether the people around the person are smiling or doing anything that seems to carry signs of joy, this does not negate the reality of the event. There is no direct connection between the emotions of those around and the accuracy and significance of the event.
On the other hand, using the surrounding circumstances to draw conclusions about the nature of a traumatic event is not always accurate. Research indicates that understanding the circumstances and situations surrounding trauma is complex, and there is strong evidence that the reactions of individuals surrounding a traumatic event do not necessarily reflect the reality of the event itself.
Studies on trauma responses confirm that people react to traumatic situations in highly individual ways, depending on how closely they relate to them. Some may display emotions that seem inconsistent with the gravity of the event, such as laughing or smiling, and this can be misinterpreted as evidence that the event is not real. However, these reactions, if they exist, may be coping mechanisms, detachment from reality, or the result of complex emotional processing under stress.
Using Dramatic Scenes To Challenge the Credibility of Palestinians’ Real Suffering
The GAZAWOOD campaign uses a deceptive tactic of exploiting staged scenes filmed by people in different locations to express the suffering of and support for the people of Gaza. The tactic is used as a way to cast doubt on the credibility of the actual events that civilians in Gaza are exposed to. The campaign admins collect staged videos that mimic real life and scenes of killing in Gaza and re-post them with sarcastic comments that aim to attract followers and spread misleading propaganda.
This tactic is used to lure viewers into believing that scenes of civilian deaths or injuries in Gaza are staged or exaggerated by linking the dramatized scenes to the reality on the ground. In reality, however, the dramatized scenes merely reflect individual gestures to express solidarity with the victims and are not a true representation of the tragic realities occurring in Gaza.
This propaganda tactic is most successful in attracting engagement when it employs sarcasm and dramatization, but only after removing the scenes from its context. This is supported by a 2022 study that showed that sarcasm is sometimes an effective tool for reducing the credibility of real events and distorting reality. Sarcasm is not only used for entertainment, but also as a political tool and to distort public perceptions, especially if it is misunderstood or presented in the wrong context.
The campaign also uses scenes from movies or TV series filmed about Palestine or the events in Gaza, specifically those that depict the suffering of civilians in dramatic scenes, to support its claims. Scenes from these movies are cut and presented in a misleading manner to claim that Palestinians are fabricating scenes of death and injuries on the ground.
For example, in May 2024, Misbar monitored several posts in which the campaign used staged scenes to challenge the credibility of scenes of Palestinian deaths. Among these scenes was a video that the campaign claimed showed Palestinians filming scenes of suffering inside a hospital, while a woman was laughing in front of the crew during the filming. It turned out that the scene was from behind the scenes of a Palestinian TV series titled ‘Bleeding Dirt’, produced in 2024, and that the scene had nothing to do with real scenes of death on the ground.
Psychological Tactics and Effects To Support a Misleading Narrative
The campaign deliberately uses many tactics based on adding several effects to support the goal of misleading the audience, such as adding comic sound effects to painful and real scenes such as death and destruction. This serves the goal of reducing the importance of these events in the eyes of the audience and distorting the original message of the content. This manipulation greatly affects how the viewer receives the event, as it can turn the tragedy into a less important scene or normalize violence and reduce the level of sympathy for the victims.
Repeating such scenes in a sarcastic manner can create a state of indifference or cynicism among the audience towards real tragedies, which changes the general narrative about originally serious topics. For example, the music that accompanies the background affects the emotional response of viewers when watching visual content. A study in the psychology of music published by Oxford University showed that sound effects can significantly change the emotional response of viewers and direct them towards a different interpretation of events.
GAZAWOOD: An Active and Organized Campaign With Financial Support
In reviewing the campaign’s background and its mechanism of operation, Misbar observed intense activity and accurate organization of the campaign and its associated pages. The campaign publishes posts on an ongoing basis, and pages have been created for it on various social media platforms, in addition to reserving servers and a website that has been operating since November 2023. This organized behavior may indicate a systematic strategy aimed at influencing public opinion, which enhances the campaign’s effectiveness and spread in the digital space.
It is not known exactly whether there is official Israeli funding for the campaign, but its operational structure reveals resources and activity that usually require regular and consistent support.
In any case, the campaign uses the fundraising method under the umbrella of an Israeli organization called IsraelGives, which is a pro-Israel organization founded in 2009 and provides an online platform used to collect donations and support organizations in Israel and provide civil society and Israeli organizations with technical tools for collecting donations, including the ability to receive donations from all over the world. It is worth noting that donations are collected in a way that does not reveal the identity of the donors or the recipients of the donations, as the fundraising campaign on the aforementioned site is managed by a person using the pseudonym, David Cohen.
The Israeli Army Seeks To Cover up Massacres and Violations
Since the beginning of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has sought to cover up its ongoing massacres and the huge number of victims left behind by the Israeli war machine, especially during periods of escalation of Israeli violence. This is done by using several strategies aimed to justify violence and reducing sympathy for the victims, as well as campaigns aimed to influence public opinion and politically empower the official narrative on the global stage.
While reports continue to indicate that the Israeli army deliberately targets civilians in Gaza, especially children, the Israeli army recently bombed the Al-Tabi'in School in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in the center of Gaza City, killing more than 100 people, while dozens were injured in the school where displaced people have taken refuge due to the ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip. To cover up the massacre, the Israeli army spread misleading information about its victims and the context in which it occurred, such as publishing the names of victims who were killed before the massacre occurred.
Read More
Pallywood and Gazawood: Systematic Campaign Romanticizes Gazan Suffering Amid War
Pro-Israeli Narratives Surrounding Palestinian Casualties in Gaza
