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.
A video clip shared on Instagram on the day Hamas attacked Israel appears to show former President Donald Trump condemning Israel. But the clip is from a 2019 campaign rally and has been taken out of context. Trump was not expressing his opinion, but was quoting Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Israel has established strict measures in response to armed attacks on its schoolchildren. But social media posts falsely claim there have been “no school shootings in Israel” and use a photo to misleadingly suggest students carry weapons to class. Only guards and other specific personnel — not students — can carry arms in Israeli schools.
The COVID-19 death rate for unvaccinated people has been significantly higher than for vaccinated people in both Israel and the U.S. Despite that, conservative commentator Ben Swann makes the false claim in a video that Israeli data prove vaccines aren’t effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. But the charts he uses don’t distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.
An Instagram post highlighted a headline about a non-peer-reviewed study from Israel that found that unvaccinated people previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 had greater immunity against the delta variant than never-infected people fully vaccinated with Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine. But the social media post omitted the study’s other finding that one dose of the vaccine enhanced protection for infection survivors.
A post circulating on social media falsely claims that a blend of sodium bicarbonate and lemon juice tea will “eliminate” the novel coronavirus. The post also claims this “cure” has prevented any COVID-19 deaths in Israel — but more than 30 people have died of the disease there.