A screenshot taken from an animation produced by the Israeli army, claiming to depict a Hamas compound underneath Gaza's al-Shifa Hospital. The video was released on Oct. 27, 2023.
Left-wing Israeli magazine +972 published the findings of a months-long investigation into the animated videos released by the Israeli army during its wars on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The army used these videos to justify its attacks by claiming to reveal the existence of military infrastructure.
The army published dozens of 3D animations depicting what it claimed were underground facilities, hidden weapon launching pads, military command centers and observation posts, and, in the case of Iran, a secret uranium enrichment facility.
The investigation, done in partnership with Israeli online outlet Local Call and published on Wednesday, details the inaccuracies in this arsenal of videos, which were presented as depicting real classified intelligence and preceded Israeli attacks on hospitals and residential areas.
The Israeli army said in a statement to +972 that “all content is based on verified intelligence from a variety of sources” with the purpose of presenting “complex information in a clear and accessible visual manner — not to produce an exact reconstruction of every physical detail in the area.”
However, +972 revealed, more than 50 percent of the content in these videos was copied from third-party sources such as film animators, public-domain images, open-source databases, and, in several cases, even images taken from the 3D model of a Scottish boat-building workshop uploaded by the Scottish Maritime Museum to depict alleged Hamas cells and hidden nuclear facilities in Iran.
In total, the investigation uncovered more than 50 different sources from which the army was pulling images, which were, in turn, replicated hundreds of times in videos of alleged sites across the region.
One such video was used by the Israeli army to back up its claim that Hezbollah stored “thousands and thousands” of rocket launchers in civilians’ homes.
The video is typical of the army’s animations, beginning with satellite imagery that the magazine points out is likely intended to create a veneer of accuracy. Then, the camera appears to zoom in on one particular village, showing what it claims is a residential neighborhood in southern Lebanon, followed by an animation of a truck driving out from a garage and positioning a rocket toward the sky.
The point on which the camera appears to zoom in on is the village of Yater, but +972 and Local Call found the landscape was completely fabricated, featuring antennas sourced from at least three different models created by 3D artist Ian Hubert. The third part of the video then switches to drone images of a strike on one lone building on a hill.
The video was posted by Israeli President Isaac Herzog on his X account on Sept. 23, 2024, the day Israel launched a widespread bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon after months of attrition warfare. “Here’s just an example of the threat we face,” he wrote. “This [Israeli army] video shows how Hezbollah stores and launches missiles in civilian areas and homes.”
Israel killed more than 4,000 Lebanese in its war with Hezbollah, including hundreds of civilians, and razed several villages in the South.
Less than a month into the war on Gaza, Israel released an animated video claiming to depict a Hamas command center underneath al-Shifa hospital, the biggest medical facility in Gaza. No evidence has been provided to date of the existence of such a compound. Israel attacked the hospital a month later and has since bombed and raided it several times. During one of the cease-fires, a mass grave was discovered at the hospital, which now lies mostly in ruins.
These animations were produced by a specific team consisting of a handful of soldiers within the Israeli army Spokesperson Unit's production and media branch. Some of these soldiers spoke with +972 for the investigation, saying that they were instructed to simplify “everything.”
“What’s going to happen, who is being attacked, what is being attacked, the locations, why.”
The videos purposely play on the kind of style used by open-source investigations, experts argued.
“I think the visual lexicon of open-source investigation is something that the Israelis have co-opted as a way to try to delegitimize [those investigations] and confuse,” Elizabeth Breiner, head of programs at the Forensic Architecture research center at Goldsmiths University of London, told the magazine.
“These visuals are open about their status as something in between the real and the imaginary, but the real harm is that they stick with people well beyond the point after which something may have been functionally disproven.”
