Author Robert Inlakesh

As the second phase of the Gaza Ceasefire is said to soon come into effect, Israel has been busy using its returned captives as propaganda and creating fact-free conspiracy theories about a potential Hamas attack plot inside Europe. Some of the same media outlets that peddled Israel’s “40 beheaded babies” hoax are again uncritically publishing articles backing these new claims.

Israeli official social media pages, along with their paid influencers, are attempting to garner sympathy from Western populations and instill fear in them through their latest anti-Hamas propaganda drive.

One of the most prominent claims to have emerged is that Hamas—which has never carried out attacks outside of Palestine—is secretly plotting to launch a terror campaign within European countries. The story first went viral following the publication of an article in The Jewish Chronicle titled “‘High likelihood’ Hamas will attack Europe in the next six months, intelligence report warns“.

The so-called intelligence report, according to The Jewish Chronicle, was written by individuals who “are not identified”. Another major issue when assessing the veracity of such claims made in this alleged report is that it was first obtained by The Mirror, a tabloid newspaper that previously uncritically published Israel’s since-debunked “beheaded babies” claims about October 7. If such an important intelligence report had been produced, it would make little sense for it to have been leaked to a tabloid news outlet. For its part, Hamas has never carried out attacks inside Europe, nor is there any sign that it would attempt such a move, as it would almost certainly backfire on the group.

As usual, such claims didn’t come out of nowhere. The conspiracy theories started where they usually do: in the imaginations of Washington-based think-tank ghouls. On October 14, 2025, the notorious Washington Institute for Near East Policy featured an article (originally published in the CTC Sentinel) by Matthew Levitt titled “Hamas Plots in Europe: A Shift Toward External Operations?“, which argued the following:

“With Hamas’ operational capabilities in Gaza decimated, and the group looking to find other ways to carry out attacks, European and Israeli officials fear that Hamas has taken the decision to go global and carry out plots abroad, marking a significant departure from the group’s prior modus operandi.”

However, the propaganda didn’t begin—or end—with an alleged Hamas plot against the West. The Israeli government understands that, as its last captive returns from Gaza, its excuse for bombing civilians, (“bring them home” and “release the hostages”) will no longer work. Therefore, it is now pushing a series of new “revelations” about their captives.

Take, for example, a recent story that went viral and was spread in a coordinated fashion by Israeli official government pages on social media. The story is framed as if there is now proof that an “Israeli hostage” was murdered by a civilian doctor in the Gaza Strip—a seemingly shocking revelation if true. So, let’s take a look at the evidence in this case.

This story really took off when a right-wing tabloid news outlet, The Daily Mail—which also spread the “beheaded babies” hoax following October 7, 2023— ran it without attempting to fact-check or present counterpoints. The piece was given the lengthy and provocative title: “Gaza doctor murdered Israeli hostage by injecting air into her veins… before her father received video of her dying and begging for her life“.

To begin with, the story is about an Israeli female soldier, Noa Marciano, who was taken as a prisoner of war, along with a group of other combatants, from the Nahal Oz military base. By definition, she was not a “hostage”, but a prisoner of war (PoW) who was seized from a military base. That being said, the execution of POWs is certainly a war crime, which brings us to the question of how she actually died.

The tabloid news outlet’s story is based on a short clip, released by retired IDF sergeant Shai Deluca, who translates into English a testimony of Marciano’s father, Avi, in which he claims that his daughter was killed inside al-Shifa hospital. Avi states that he was sent a video on Telegram of his daughter being injected with air by a doctor in Gaza.

Without any investigation or skepticism, this claim was pushed by tabloid outlets and then Israeli government social media pages as a new revelation, with The Daily Mail writing that the soldier’s father was “speaking publicly to a small crowd for the first time”.

However, this was not the first time the claim had been made. Noa Marciano’s parents had told the media back in May of 2024 that “they chose to murder her instead of taking care of her. It was a doctor who did it, in a hospital. She was injured by air force bombings and was taken to Shifa”. Yet this story does not match up with the Israeli military’s own account of what happened after they recovered the deceased soldier’s body in November of 2023.

The Israeli army admitted that she was injured following a series of its own airstrikes. Hamas had even released a video of Marciano on November 20 that year, blaming her death on Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes. After Israel’s forces had invaded the area surrounding al-Shifa Hospital and committed civilian massacres in and around the largest medical complex in Gaza, the army located the female soldier’s body nearby.

Following this, the IDF attempted to push back against Hamas’ claims that Marciano was killed by an airstrike, stating that “the observed wounds appear more consistent with bullet injuries, and there is also an indication that she may have suffered from injuries related to a fall from a height.” Keep in mind that nothing was said to suggest that a civilian doctor was involved or that the soldier was injected with air. This means someone is lying.

There are three main narratives surrounding the death of Noa Marciano. Hamas claims it was an Israeli airstrike—this argument is strengthened by Israel admitting to committing such a missile strike. The Israeli military claims that the airstrike only injured their soldier, but that Noa was actually killed by either falling or gunshot wounds. The parents of the deceased soldier claim she was murdered by a doctor.

Not all of these claims can be true simultaneously. When assessing the claims from Hamas and the IDF, both sides have motives to lie. However, it would make more sense for Israel to lie in this case if it had indeed killed her, and both parties were able to examine the body.

Then there are the parents’ claims alleging that a Telegram video was sent featuring a civilian doctor injecting air into Marciano’s veins. First, why has no such video been released to the public or even human rights groups for independent assessment, given that no one else has corroborated this claim? Even assuming they did receive such a video, how could the parents possibly know that air was being injected into her veins, and how could they verify the authenticity of the clip? Apart from this allegation, nothing else suggests that Marciano was killed in this manner.

Just as in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, Western corporate media refuses to ask basic questions or look into the background facts surrounding the story. Instead, it uncritically posts such atrocity propaganda without any skepticism.

Since then, Israeli officials and propagandists have continuously published videos of their POWs in Hamas captivity—along with various unsubstantiated claims about what happened to them—while the evidence reveals that most of the deceased prisoners were killed by Israel’s own airstrikes or friendly fire.

Meanwhile, the families of Israeli captives who were killed by Israeli soldiers in December 2023—who opened fire on them despite the hostages being shirtless, unarmed, and waving a makeshift white flag—have recently criticized the military’s decision to promote the very battalion commander who oversaw the incident.

Not only does this propaganda campaign demonize Hamas and spread fearmongering stories about potential terrorist attacks overseas, but it also seeks to dehumanize civilians in the Gaza Strip, exemplified by the recent allegation that a Gaza medical worker injected air into a hostage’s veins.

The timing appears far from coincidental, as Phase Two of the Gaza ceasefire is approaching amid roundly ignored repeat violations by the Israeli military and a near-complete disregard of the ongoing decimation of the Palestinian people.

Israel has expressed reservations about Phase Two, making demands that are considered nonstarters by Hamas and the other Palestinian factions in Gaza. The US-Israeli agenda, which was passed through the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) (Resolution 2802) last month, is to commit regime change in the Gaza Strip.

 

 

The Trump administration has explicitly laid out its strategy to roll out a multinational invasion force, called the International Stabilization Force (ISF), alongside the implementation of a Board of Peace (BoP) to govern Gaza. The ISF will be tasked with fighting Hamas and any other Palestinian armed groups, while the BoP will make US President Donald Trump the de facto leader of Gaza. Implementing such a vision is proving difficult as most nations don’t want to be involved in an effort of this kind.

If Washington’s original vision collapses, the Israelis are likely to undermine the ceasefire agreement or keep it stalled between the first two phases. To justify such actions, Tel Aviv would need new propaganda strategies, particularly since it can no longer rely on the “release the hostages” excuse.

Another driver of this renewed victim narrative by the Israeli government is the release of testimonies from Palestinians kidnapped and detained without trial in abusive facilities, as documented by local human rights groups.

In November 2025, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) documented new evidence of Israel’s systematic campaign of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees. One of the most shocking testimonies came from a 42-year-old mother who reported being raped four times by Israeli soldiers, among other forms of torture, while held in the Sde Teiman detention center.

Another rights group, called Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), published a report documenting the abduction of Palestinian children from Gaza and the severe torture they endured. One documented case involved a 16-year-old boy named Faris, who was abducted while seeking aid and subjected to various forms of torture, including sexualized psychological abuse: he was shown a doctored photo of his mother lying next to an Israeli soldier and told that she, along with his two sisters, had been raped and killed.

 

 

While the Western corporate media ran front-page stories and extensive investigations into flimsy claims or imagined worst-case scenarios involving Israelis held in Gaza, they have all but ignored the mountains of evidence proving Israel has been operating an industrial-scale torture program against thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. These individuals were seized without charge and without regard for whether they were women or children, and an unknown number remain in torture facilities to this day.

Unfortunately, mainstream press outlets function as little more than stenographers for the Israeli foreign ministry. By refusing to verify Israeli propaganda before publishing it as fact, and showing an apparent unwillingness to report on one of the most horrifying campaigns of mass rape and torture on earth, these media outlets are the equivalent to PR firms tasked with painting lipstick on a genocide. Their reporting suggests that, just like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they too view Palestinians as Amalekites—not full human beings deserving of dignity.