For months, Vice President Kamala Harris has walked a fine line on the conflict in Israel and Gaza. Some of the rhetoric attacking Harris goes too far and misrepresents her stated position.
NFL teams paid tribute to the victims in Israel of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack by holding moments of silence before games during the following week. But a recent social media post falsely claimed the NFL encouraged players “to kneel for Israel before every game.” An NFL spokesperson called the claim “patently false.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson cited concern about “fiscal stability” in saying that a Republican bill to provide aid for Israel would have “pay-fors in it.” But the legislation would increase the deficit, not pay for itself.
Posts on social media are spreading the baseless claim that the ruler of Qatar has “threatened that if the bombing of Gaza does not stop, he will cut off the supply of gas to the world.” The country’s government gets most of its revenue from energy exports, and there’s no record of Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani making such a threat.
Hearst Television, which has been one of our media partners since 2019, recently featured our work in a “Get the Facts” segment on how to detect social media misinformation.
The U.S. provides Israel with $3.8 billion each year in military funding under an already established agreement. But social media posts are sharing a doctored “memorandum” that falsely purports to show an additional $8 billion was approved for Israel by President Joe Biden on Oct. 7, the day war began between Hamas and Israel.
An Instagram post misleadingly claims President Joe Biden is “funding every angle of this conflict” between Hamas and Israel. The U.S. does supply military aid to Israel, but it has supplied only humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in Gaza, not military aid to Hamas.
Contrary to claims by some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, U.S. taxpayers did not indirectly fund the recent Hamas attack on Israel with money unfrozen as part of a prisoner swap with Iran in August.
President Joe Biden met with the Israeli president in July at the White House. A clip from that meeting is circulating online with the false suggestion that Biden was “falling asleep” during the meeting. The full video shows Biden was consulting notecards and wasn’t asleep.
Eight Republicans kicked off the 2024 presidential election debates in Milwaukee.