How an Indian disinformation campaign is targeting Palestinians
Since the start of the conflict between Hamas and Israel on October 7, many Indian accounts on X (formerly Twitter) have been claiming that Palestinians are pretending to be wounded by Israeli army bombardments. These viral videos have no basis in fact and are part of a larger disinformation campaign that seems to be coming from India.
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This video with over 700,000 views on X has been shared en masse by Indian accounts that claim Palestinians are pretending to be wounded by Israeli bombings.
"Welcome to Islamic University of Victim Card. Here you can learn how to do full makeup and cry [...] then blame ISRAEL", reads one tweet sharing the video.
Using a simple reverse image search, we can trace this video back to 2017. In fact, these images were taken during a film shoot organised by Doctors of the World in Gaza, as reported by the Turkish media TRT.
The research institute DFRLab published an investigation into the disinformation war waged by South Asian networks on X (formerly Twitter) since the start of the clashes between Hamas and Israel.
Eric Baker, associate director of communications for DFRLab, told us how these accounts share disinformation:
We noticed during our research that a series of seemingly Indian Twitter accounts were sharing what we call "copy-pasta" content, or content that is copied and pasted and posted in rapid succession often within minutes or seconds of each other.
A report by Logically Facts, an organisation that specialises in analysing and combating misinformation, adds that this misinformation campaign comes in the run-up to the Indian elections, which will take place in the spring of 2024.
Many of the accounts sharing anti-Palestinian content may also be in favour of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Regularly accused of stigmatising Muslims, the party is staunchly opposed to its pro-Palestine counterpart, the Congress.