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Gazawood: Israeli NGO links account to large-scale disinformation
The Israeli X account called Gazawood claims to expose alleged Palestinian “lies” from Gaza. But Forbidden Stories and its partners have uncovered research from an Israeli NGO indicating that Gazawood does, in fact, practice online disinformation on a massive scale.
Key findings
- Only 5.75% of Gazawood’s so-called “debunks” are actually credible, according to Israeli NGO Fake Reporter.
- We identified three individuals involved in this disinformation project: an Israeli writer of teen fiction, an American historian known for his attacks on journalists and a former general in the Israeli army.
By Frédéric Métézeau
April 11th, 2025
With Itamar Benzaquen (The Seventh Eye/Shakuf) and Nicolas Falez (RFI).
“Is Hossam Shabat really dead? The evidence raises serious doubts—his ‘death’ might’ve been staged, for reasons unknown.”
This conspiratorial post was published on March 26, 2025, by the X account Gazawood, which has over 70,000 followers. Two days earlier, Hossam Shabat, a reporter for Al Jazeera, was killed in northern Gaza by the Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service, and the army. According to the latter, it had targeted “a Hamas terrorist.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called it a “murder.”
Hossam Shabat being carried on a stretcher after being hit by an Israeli strike, filmed by journalist AbdalQader A Sabbah on March 24th, 2025 (Credit: @abd.sabbah / Instagram).
Portrait of journalist Hossam Shabat posted on his instagram account on March 25th, 2025, the day after his death (Credit: @hossam_shbat / Instagram).
Despite these assertions and the numerous videos online showing the journalist lying lifeless next to his car, as well as at his funeral, Gazawood suggested that Shabat was not actually dead: “The whole thing is fake. Hossam staged his own death.” The account cited a lack of visible ground damage from the alleged strike and spots of blood that supposedly didn’t match any real injury. “We’re not claiming facts—just asking the hard questions,” the account’s author wrote, leaving the door open to speculation and conspiracy theories.
As part of the Gaza Project, Forbidden Stories, its Israeli partner The Seventh Eye/Shakuf and RFI investigated the Gazawood account. The investigation relied in particular on work by Fake Reporter, an Israeli NGO dedicated to fighting online hate and disinformation.
Palestinians accused of systematic lying
The images of little Mohammed Al-Dura’s death on September 30, 2000 in Gaza were seen worldwilde (Credit: France 2 / AFP).
The origins of this story go back to the Second Intifada. On September 30, 2000, France 2 broadcasted footage showing the death of young Mohammed Al-Dura in his father’s arms, killed by Israeli army gunfire. But American medieval historian Richard Landes was convinced the network’s Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin had staged the entire scene (see inset). Landes coined it “Pallywood,” a portmanteau of Palestine and Hollywood. “Like it’s a film industry,” explains Ghassan Mattar, researcher and OSINT specialist at Fake Reporter. “The idea is to claim that anything coming from Palestinians is a lie.”
The X Gazawood account describes its approach as “exposing the role of media manipulation in shaping anti-Israel and West narratives” (Credit: Screenshot, Forbidden Stories).
The X Gazawood account was created in November 2023, after Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks. “The Gazawood account uses that term and changes it to the current conflict in Gaza, to say that everything coming out of Gaza is essentially a lie,” said Mattar. Through digital investigations corroborated by human testimony, Fake Reporter and The Seventh Eye identified the person behind the account to be Idan Knochen, an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Jerusalem, previously known as the author of fantasy novels for young readers. In a conversation with our partners, Knochen confirmed this information but declined to give an interview, instead referring them to another figure involved in Gazawood: none other than Richard Landes. “They got in touch with me, and we’ve been trying to coordinate a project to present the whole issue of this staging,” Landes confirmed to The Seventh Eye.
Landes also identified former Israeli brigadier general and former director-general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs Yossi Kuperwasser as being part of this disinformation project. When contacted by The Seventh Eye, Kuperwasser declined to go into detail: “I have not been directly involved in the project. I connected Richard with various people so he could present the idea to them.” He also refused to name these “various people.” One thing is certain: Gazawood’s influence is undeniable. In addition to its X account, it operates a website and a public Telegram channel. It also relies on a network of influencers, some with large followings, who amplify its messages.
Mapping the 30 most influential X accounts that shared Gazawood content between January 1 and April 9, 2025 (Credit: Fake Reporter).
According to Fake Reporter, between October 7, 2023, and July 15, 2024, mentions of “Pallywood” (in English and Hebrew) rose by 5838% on X. Gazawood saw an even more dramatic increase: 29913% over the same period. However, Richard Landes has even broader ambitions: “We’d like to work with the army spokesperson’s unit . . . most of the people there weren’t even born during the Al-Dura case.”
Are you surprised by the structure and scale of Gazawood-Pallywood?
No. Pallywood has existed since the years following my France 2 broadcast of the death of young Mohammed Al-Dura on September 30, 2000, in Gaza. The image was so powerful that strong pro-Israeli groups launched a campaign to claim the footage was staged. This ended after a long legal battle in Paris. France 2 and I filed a libel suit against one of our accusers, who was ultimately convicted. In my view, the campaign was aimed to delegitimize my work as a journalist. I’m not surprised to see Richard Landes—who created Pallywood—as part of this. He’s a specialist in this kind of delegitimization.
What is the goal of the Pallywood movement?
First, to reinforce support among pro-Israel audiences and Jewish communities, ensuring everyone backs the official Israeli narrative: “Israel doesn’t kill civilians, Israel doesn’t kill children, there are no collateral victims. All the images we see are staged.” Some even went as far as saying I orchestrated everything with backing from the French government, which they claimed was anti-Israel. It’s part of a broader image war. Today in Gaza, all imagery is tightly controlled. On the Israeli side, we only see army footage or that of journalists embedded with military units. You rarely see Palestinian victims when Israel is filming. Similarly, Palestinian journalists—some of whom work for reputable international media—don’t have the ability to film dead or alive Hamas fighters. When Palestinians film, you mostly see civilian victims—and those are very real.
Do these Pallywood or Gazawood campaigns harm journalism?
Obviously, they are part of the broader challenge facing professional journalism today: the war on images, on information, and on reality. Pallywood spreads outright falsehoods. Some call it “fake news,” but to me, it’s pure disinformation. What I take away from my own experience is that you must never back down. Israeli NGOs are doing the work and producing data that confirm what we’re seeing in Gaza. It’s absolutely appalling. In my view, this will eventually end up before the International Criminal Court.
Only 5.75% of posts were deemed credible
The Gazawood Research Group, a private Telegram group which was infiltrated by Fake Reporter, collects and analyzes videos supposedly coming from Gaza. Around 30 members examine such videos in an attempt to “debunk” them.
But according to Mattar, Gazawood itself spreads falsehoods and disinformation. After reviewing the 731 debunking posts published by the account from December 25, 2023, the date of the first post, to August 25, 2024, and fact-checking them, Fake Reporter considered only 42 to be “legitimate.” “Only around 5.75% of its content is actual debunking or fact-checking. The other content is just finding the most ridiculous information inside the video to claim it’s fake, which is not how fact-checking works,” Mattar asserts.
The account regularly posts accusations to discredit Palestinians, claiming that dolls are used in place of dead babies or noting smiles among the rubble in bombed-out Gaza. Gazawood suggests that Palestinians are masters at staging, citing a hospital scene in which a visitor is flanked by a cameraman and a boom operator as proof in one instance.
“Is this a hospital?” asks the Gazawood account (Credit: screenshot from X)
But Fake Reporter discovered that the footage was taken from a fictional Palestinian TV series called The Bleeding Land.
The incriminating message has since been deleted. When asked about the reliability of the account, Landes said, “ I know nothing that’s untrue. Maybe I know of some cases where it was over-interpreted.” As for the 5.75% credibility rate cited by Fake Reporter, he said that “seems an extraordinarily severe standard.”
Scene from the Palestinian series The Bleeding Land, used by Gazawood (Credit: YouTube Screenshot, Forbidden Stories).
Lies that are "bigger and stronger"
To defend himself, Landes also referred to the “emotional blackmail” surrounding images of dead children in Gaza: “ If we don’t sympathize with all this suffering, we’re heartless ? I’ve been accused of that, you know, that ‘Pallywood is making fun of Palestinian suffering.’ But no, it is them who are mocking it..”
According to Marcus Bösch, a researcher at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and an expert on disinformation and social media, Pallywood-Gazawood looks like a trap set for both professional journalists and the general public: “These lies are simply bigger, stronger and also trigger more in the brain.” In his view, “This whole debunking, fact-checking game is actually ineffective in many situations because then the other side debunks the debunker again . . . it’s an endless iteration.”
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