A very interesting episode is playing out right now. Overnight, Israeli planes carried out an airstrike targeting senior Hamas commanders who had embedded themselves among Palestinian civilians in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. The Hamas commanders—Samer Ismail Khader Abu Daqqa, Osama Tabash, and Ayman Mabhouh—held senior posts in the group's military wing and were involved in the October 7 massacre, as well as other attacks in recent months, according to the IDF. They had established a command post in Al-Masawi, an area in Khan Younis that had been designated by Israel as a safe zone for Palestinian civilians. True to form, Hamas immediately claimed that 40 people—including, it said, "entire families"—had been killed in the attack and the group released footage of people in reflective vests digging through sand dunes in an apparent effort to locate the dead. In a departure from its usual practice, though, the IDF swiftly responded to the Hamas claim, accusing the group of lying. "The numbers published by the Hamas-run Government Information Office in Gaza, which has consistently broadcast lies and false information throughout the war, do not align with the information held by the IDF, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike," the Israeli military said. Then, a remarkable thing happened: Hamas admitted it had inflated the original number and cut it by more than half, to 19. Very quietly, the Hamas health ministry issued a "clarification," revising the death toll downward while noting that the number may rise if additional bodies are found. Of course, that hasn't stopped certain media outlets from continuing to parrot the original Hamas claims hours later. Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Haaretz still have the now-disproven Hamas claim of 40 dead in their respective headlines and outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Time Magazine still have it in their articles, despite several updates since. While the updated Hamas figure is still highly unreliable—the group's claims have been disproven time and again throughout this war, and there's no reason to believe that won't happen in this case, too—there's a lesson here: When challenged immediately and decisively, even Hamas can be forced to admit that it lied. Spokespeople, communications professionals, and activists should bear this episode in mind. Speed and facts matter.
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