Al-Jazeera
Amidst Israel’s occupation of Palestine, a wave of disinformation has flooded social media, often intertwined with anti-Palestinian sentiment and Islamophobia. This trend has been notably amplified on social media platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, especially during Elon Musk’s leadership.
What’s particularly intriguing about this disinformation surge following Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel is the involvement of right-leaning accounts rooted in India. False narratives have spread rapidly, including fabricated stories of Hamas kidnapping a Jewish baby and beheading a young boy on a truck. Some of these falsehoods were propelled by accounts with verified blue checkmarks, significantly boosting their virality. Shockingly, a widely-shared tweet even propagated the conspiracy theory that the Hamas attack was a US-led psychological operation, according to Al-Jazeera.
BOOM, a highly regarded Indian fact-checking service, identified several verified Indian X users spearheading this disinformation campaign. They’ve been dubbed “disinfluencers” – influencers who consistently disseminate disinformation – and their focus has largely revolved around negatively portraying Palestine or supporting Israel.
These disinfluencers have perpetuated harmful stereotypes, depicting Palestinians as inherently violent. One instance involved a video falsely claiming to show young girls taken as sex slaves by a “Palestinian” fighter, which, upon closer examination, seemed to be footage from a school trip to Jerusalem. Al-Jazeera reported that despite its questionable authenticity, the video garnered thousands of retweets and at least 6 million impressions, with most accounts sharing it being based in India.
Even more concerning, some of these misleading narratives found their way into the Telegram channel of Angry Saffron, an apparent open-source intelligence (OSINT) channel operating from India. This suggests either a lack of diligence in intelligence gathering or a deliberate effort to exploit the credibility associated with the term “OSINT.” Another instance involved a video falsely alleging that Hamas was kidnapping a Jewish baby, which gained over a million views in a single post. Seven out of the top 10 most-shared tweets featuring this misleading video were from profiles based in India or with the Indian flag in their biography, amassing more than 3 million impressions on X, Al-Jazeera added.
Many of these accounts that shared false videos have a history of posting anti-Muslim comments on X. For example, one account that shared the fabricated video of a boy being beheaded by Hamas used the hashtag #IslamIsTheProblem in the same post. Another account that disseminated the misleading video of Palestinians kidnapping sex slaves had previously made derogatory remarks, such as, “The only difference is when Muslim girls convert to Hinduism they live happily ever after. But when Hindu girls convert to Islam they end up in a suitcase or a fridge.”
Some accounts have been even more explicit in their hostility toward Palestine. A purported Indian account, claiming to belong to a retired Indian soldier, asserted, “Israel must finish off Palestine from the planet.”
India has grappled with a growing problem of Islamophobia, particularly since the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Reports, such as one from the Australia-based Islamic Council of Victoria, have pointed out that a significant portion of Islamophobic tweets originate from India. The plight of the Palestinians has attracted Islamophobes, and this is evident on social media. Some of this online hatred can be traced back to what’s been termed the “BJP’s IT Cell,” which has played a role in stoking the flames of animosity. Swati Chaturvedi’s book, “I Am a Troll,” delves into the BJP’s online social media army, highlighting the network of volunteers aligned with the party who engage in trolling critical voices. According to Sadhavi Khosla, one of Chaturvedi’s interviewees, “The BJP has a network of volunteers who take instructions from the social media cell, and two affiliated organizations, to troll critical voices.”
