In the Israel-Hamas conflict, wait for verifiable facts While we were taking a break, the Hamas militant group attacked Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and abducting more than 200. Israel responded with airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas is headquartered, killing at least 3,785 people in Gaza so far, according to Palestinian estimates. It's often said that the first casualty of war is truth, so we urge readers to be wary of social media claims and initial reports. Immediately after the attack on Israeli towns, for instance, social media posts last week claimed that "40 babies" were "beheaded" by Hamas. That conflated comments by a correspondent for an Israel-based television network. She had referred to 40 babies being killed — and separately that there were reports some were beheaded. The Israeli government released graphic images that claimed to show babies were burned, but did not officially confirm decapitations of infants. This week, the Gaza health ministry claimed that 500 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. The initial images were at night, making the statement hard to assess, but it received wide publicity and the alleged attack on the hospital spurred outrage across the Arab world. Israel blamed the incident on a misfired rocket by another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The next day, videos and photos showed many dead bodies as result of the blast, though not the debris damage that generally would be associated with an airstrike. The White House said that U.S. intelligence "with high confidence" believes Israel was not responsible. But how the blast occurred — and the death toll — has not been confirmed by independent sources, while news organizations have been hampered by not having access to the blast site. This Washington Post report provides an update on what is known now. At the end of this newsletter, we've provided a curated list of five of our most notable fact checks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Click the links to learn more about claims about Palestinian payments, diplomatic issues and estimates about Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile, among other issues. The link in the box below will take you to an article that explores Israeli and Palestinian historical perspectives. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. Nikki Haley misleads on Chinese land acquisitions In her campaign for president, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has warned repeatedly about Chinese investments, including land purchases, in the United States. Yet as governor from January 2011 to January 2017, she recruited Chinese companies to her state. So an exchange with an audience member at a town hall in Iowa caught our attention. Haley was asked this question: "I saw something on the internet that said you gave China thousands of acres of land in South Carolina. Why would you do that?" She responded: "Don't believe what you read on the internet. … We didn't sell any land to the Chinese. But, yes, I recruited a fiberglass company." We dug into the records. It turns out the land in this case was given to the company free — and there were many other deals that involved land sales. We found her response misleading and worthy of Pinocchios. Click the link below to discover how many. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read Israel-related fact checks | 
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