Israel's Twitter account hit with embarrassing correction over Hamas/Isis tweet

As the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on following Hamas’ attack on the Middle Eastern country on Saturday, social media has been flooded with fake news, disinformation and other inaccuracies – and even Israel itself has been caught up in that, too.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant group branded a terrorist organisation by the UK government and European Union, have been consistently compared to Isis by Israel, which declared war and carried out a bombardment of Gaza in retaliation against Hamas’ attacks.

Isis stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Sometimes it is referred to as Isil, which is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Israel’s tweet from Saturday reads: “Hamas = Isis. Remember that.”

The distinction between the two groups has since been pointed out to Israel via X’s Community Notes feature, with an anonymous user linking to a news report from the Times of Israel in 2019 which notes that “Hamas and Isis hate Israel – and each other”.

The report states Hamas carried out arrests of Islamic State supporters in the Gaza Strip, and claims Isis views the Palestinian group and its backers as “apostates”.

It goes on to note that Isis released a video in 2018 which concluded with a member executing a man who smuggled arms to Hamas.

Despite being undermined by X’s Community Notes feature, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has doubled down on comparing the two groups, once again claiming they are identical in tweets shared on Tuesday and Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden has also tweeted about parallels between the two organisations, writing on X on Tuesday: “The brutality of Hamas, the blood-thirstiness, brings to mind the worst rampages of Isis. This is terrorism.”

More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed and more than 2,700 left injured following Hamas’ attacks, while at least 1,055 people have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes – according to the latest updates.

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