• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 13, 2023

Nearly a month after an explosion in the parking lot of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City reportedly killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, the cause of the incident remains a political flashpoint, with media coverage attributing it to either to an Israeli air strike or an errant rocket launched from within Gaza.

This morning, news veracity ratings service NewGuard publicly released a "misinformation fingerprint" debunking claims that it was conclusively caused by Israel, contributing to the spread of search terms, hashtags and other misinformation accelerants.

"NewsGuard analysts have reviewed the evidence offered in numerous subsequent assessments and concluded that there is no completely dispositive evidence demonstrating who was responsible for the blast, but that mounting evidence contradicts definitive claims that Israel was responsible and instead points to a rocket fired at Israel from Gaza," NewsGuard said in its statement, adding, "This conclusion is based on reports from the U.S. and other intelligence agencies, independent experts, and visual investigations by multiple news outlets."

NewsGuard said the goal of the fingerprint analysis is to provide reporters with a detailed assessment of available datapoints normally reserved for its licensees, including how the false claim arose and spread, as well as search terms, hashtags and other tools for tracking its spread and for finding all examples of the claim online.