Article originally appeared on www.washingtonexaminer.com.
The bombing of a Gaza hospital on Tuesday has illustrated how quickly misinformation has been weaponized in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital occurred around 7 p.m. local time on Tuesday, and Hamas instantly blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying hundreds of innocent people had been killed. In that same time period, the Israel Defense Forces announced it would investigate.
Just hours later, however, the IDF confidently concluded it was not responsible for what happened; rather, a different terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, had fired a series of rockets from Gaza and one failed to launch properly, landing next to the hospital.
But that failed to stop multiple media organizations, as well as Democratic politicians, from echoing the Hamas talking points. Widespread condemnation of Israel resulted in thousands of students rallying at Egyptian universities, protests in Lebanon, including near the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and similar events in Jordan, Morocco, and Bahrain, according to the Associated Press.
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