The rising tensions between Gaza and Israel have sparked a battle on two fronts: the Middle East, and social media. The fight against misinformation has never been more imperative than today, and with social media outlets like Instagram and Twitter making it easier than ever to post, there’s almost no way to stop it.

As a teenager, I see a lot of what celebrities are saying, what my friends are saying, and what’s trending on the topic. A lot of information is just plain wrong, yet people retweet or repost because it looks factual. It takes five minutes to make an official-looking graphic, and even less time to circulate it on social media.

Many celebrities with large followings have fallen prey to this misinformation, for example Gigi and Bella Hadid, two famous models and sisters. Bella claimed that Gazans can’t leave the country and can’t access transport, medical help or clean water.

The fact is that roughly 21% (according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics) of the Israeli population are Arabs, with the same rights as anyone else in Israel. About 200,000 Palestinian Arabs around East Jerusalem were offered citizenship, which they refused, although they still live there: similar to a green card holder in the United States, under the same set of laws as everyone else.

Palestinians live under the rule of Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank, governed by their own people, which is what they so desperately wanted. They can vote in their own elections, have access to employment just like anyone else, and have clean water. They have the ability to leave their towns. Although it’s true that Israel does have checkpoints (for security reasons), if you’re not carrying any prohibited item or doing anything wrong, in most cases it should be fine.

All of these statements are backed up by fact, many of which you can find by doing a simple Google search. It only goes to show that celebrities and impressionable people decide to skim an Al Jazeera headline or a random tweet and jump to conclusions without doing any further research whatsoever.

Bella Hadid also posted a picture of a Muslim woman being led away by IDF soldiers, with the caption “What if this was your mother?” Further research shows that picture originated from a video of that same woman stabbing an Israeli official. If that’s not an epic social faux pas, I don’t know what is.

Another famous example of this is the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Located in Jerusalem, it was under Jordanian rule for some time in the mid-1900s, which was when Jordan moved in 28 Arab families. During the Six-Day War in 1967, incited by the Arab nations, Israel retook the land. In the 1980s, the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Yisrael Committee took the neighborhood to the Israeli court, where they ruled that the tenants could stay as long as they paid rent. Anyone who has done an inch of research would know that Sheikh Jarrah is a civil case, and Israel isn’t even a litigant. Nevertheless, it’s used as a cover for Arab unrest, denying the fact that Israel is the victim in this situation.

Another thing circulating online are videos of IDF soldiers seemingly “breaking into” mosques and arresting people at random; and claims that Israel bombs places of worship. Let’s take a look at one such incident, where IDF soldiers entered a mosque. What actually happened is that rioters threw rocks and attacked soldiers, and then ran into their mosques. When the IDF soldiers came to arrest the rioters, people took pictures claiming innocents were being led away.

The representative of Israel to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, tweeted out pictures of rocks stockpiled within mosques to throw at soldiers. If your place of worship is so important to you, why do you run in there to hide? Why do you fight from inside? Why do you store weapons under it, and act devastated when Israel tries to get rid of those weapons? Hamas hides its weapons in schools and houses of worship, while Israel evacuates their citizens from those places.

The reason there’s typically a disparity between Israeli and Palestinian casualties is because Israel builds bomb shelters, while Hamas takes international humanitarian aid and builds missles. Israel protects its citizens, while the PA uses them as a public relations tool. The money that Gaza didn’t have to vaccinate its own citizens just landed in Israel.

Also, it doesn’t help that, according to the IDF, 300 of Gaza’s own missiles misfired and exploded within the city, killing and wounding scores of civilians. It doesn’t help that Hamas places their rocket launchers in densely populated civilian areas.
And it certainly doesn’t help when Hamas instructs Palestinians to stay in areas the IDF has told them to evacuate.

Meanwhile, Israel does everything it can to protect their citizens.

Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations states that “Nothing … shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Mitch McConnell, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have all supported Israel’s right to defend herself, but why then do so many American not heed the words of their leaders, the people we voted for, the people we trust?

Social action, a common theme on social media, has seemingly decided to adopt Gaza, putting them on the same level as Uyghur Muslims in China and Black Lives Matter. No matter who says it’s false, no matter who denounces the misinformation, it will never stop being shared, in an effort to stay “woke.”

Social media can be a great place to share pictures, talk to and meet people, and gain popularity. But, as we can see now, there are many downsides to these platforms, and we should call on them to fact check anti-Zionist posts the same way they so vehemently flag political tweets. We should not stand idly by while misinformation traverses the internet.

If you see something that is incorrect, most social media platforms have a button to report misinformation, or maybe just post a comment. The battle against misinformation is never-ending, but at least we can do our part.

Joseph Ostroff is a sophomore at the Maimonides School of Brookline, Massachusetts. He is formerly from Highland Park.