Chinese state media on Tuesday used years-old photographs from Israel’s previous battles against Hamas and photos from the Syrian dictatorship’s war against its own people to create propaganda framing Israel for using white phosphorus bombs against civilians.
Social media users spotted the deception soon after the state-run China Internet Information Center (CIIC) produced its false propaganda, which, in turn, cited claims from Iran’s terrorist-linked Tasnim News Agency.
CIIC’s website posted ostensible photos of white phosphorus bombs landing on buildings in Gaza. Two of the four photos in the Chinese state media post were old images taken during Israel’s clashes with Hamas two and seven years ago.
Newsweek on Wednesday confirmed that the other two photos deployed by the Chinese government were not only years old but from Syria, not Gaza. One of them was taken in Damascus in 2018, while the other is from an “apparent phosphorus attack in Aleppo in 2016.”
Newsweek acidly noted:
The Chinese internet is known for its fast-acting, hypervigilant censors when it comes to topics the Chinese Communist Party deems sensitive, often deleting offending posts within minutes. However, disinformation that supports the party line is often left alone or even actively promoted.
In this case, the post was taken down by the Chinese propaganda agency after social media users worldwide spotted the deception, but copies of it are still floating around on Weibo, China’s tightly controlled version of Twitter. Some of the accounts reposting the propaganda on Weibo have millions of followers.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in an airstrike against a residential tower with hundreds of civilian residents. As of Thursday, there has been no independent confirmation of that claim.
White phosphorus is an incendiary chemical that ignites upon contact with oxygen. Fires created by exposure to this chemical burn fast, hot, and very bright, and they are notoriously difficult to extinguish. Burns from exposure to white phosphorus are devastating and difficult to treat, running a risk that residue could be exposed to oxygen and reignite during medical treatment.
Many military forces around the world use white phosphorus munitions, including the United States, but mostly to provide illumination or generate smoke. In 1980, the United Nations issued a protocol restricting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas.
Israel is not a signatory to this protocol, and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has said that while it used white phosphorus rounds against Hamas in the past, it did not use them against civilian areas.
