As if the “fog of war” weren’t enough to confuse things, internet trolls are having a field day posting lies, fakery and half-truths about the Israel-Hamas war.

How are we supposed to know whom to believe?

It would be easy to say, “just stay off the internet,” but you know that’s not gonna happen. So let’s hope that people who want truth and valuable information can resist the temptation to go to sites posting phony stories about who did what and to whom.

That leaves us a pretty broad middle ground between abstinence and total indulgence.

This will take a minute, but here’s a recap, courtesy of The New York Times, of some false “reports” shown online in the first four days of the Hamas invasion of Israel.

• A video showing a “Palestinian terrorist” paragliding into Israel. It was actually a man in June 2023 who paraglided into an electrical wire in Korea and died. This was posted on Elon Musk’s X, the wishy-washy new name he gave to Twitter.
• A 15-second video showing a “boy in Gaza” grieving his sisters, supposedly killed by Israel. It was actually a boy in Aleppo grieving his sisters killed in 2014 by Syrian bombs. Posted on X.
• A “new air assault” on Israel by Hamas. It was actually video game footage from a video game called Arma 3 from 2022.
• Video of a woman “being lit on fire” by Hamas at an Israeli music festival. It was in reality a 16-year-old girl set on fire in 2015 in Guatemala. Posted on X.
• A White House memo announcing “$8 billion in aid” to Israel. It was a fabrication, apparently based on an announcement in July of aid to Ukraine.
• A “BBC report” that Bellingcat, a legitimate investigative reporting site, had found Hamas weapons sent to Ukraine by NATO. Bellingcat said, “100% fake.” Posted on X and Telegram.
• An image showing “Israeli warplanes” bombing St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza. The church reported it was “untouched” by Israeli bombings. Posted on X.
• A charge that CNN had faked a rocket attack. CNN on Monday showed real footage of its crew ducking for cover as rockets were fired near the Israel-Gaza border. CNN said the charge was “fabricated (and) inaccurate and irresponsibly distorts the … moment that was covered live on CNN.” Posted on X.
• A report that the U.S. embassy in Beirut had been evacuated. In reality, the embassy “has not evacuated and is open and operating normally,” the embassy said in a statement.

Two days later, The Washington Post ran a list of other “fog of war” fakery, none of the items duplicating the list from The New York Times.

For all the gifts technology has given us in the past couple of decades, it has brought us a new set of problems with which we are not coping well. Above all, it has brought an easy path to notoriety for way too many people who have bad or, at best, poorly thought-out intentions.

And it has brought all of us the expectation of total, accurate and instant information. The technology will cut through the fog, as it were. But instead, the technology thickens the fog.

Bemoaning such rush to judgment about this awful war, Elizabeth Spiers wrote on Tuesday in The Times: “Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen.” She was quoting Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who called snap judgments “emotional booby traps.”

No one, it seems, is immune to rushing to judgment. President Biden on Wednesday declared the ghastly bombing of a hospital in Gaza resulted from a Palestinian rocket misfire. Usually cautious — his tempered manner contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor — Biden likely spoke too soon. Most people assessing the hospital attack are withholding judgment.

If you were counting, you noticed that at least six of the nine examples of phony reports I cited from The Times were posted on Musk’s X. His may be the most egregious of the “news” sites, though others also post tons of junk. He’s mostly unrepentant, and it’s getting him into trouble.

Thierry Breton, who oversees the European Union’s Digital Services Act, told Musk the act “sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation.” X is subject to fines under the act.

Musk replied: “Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.” Then Breton replied it was “up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk.”

It’s easy to put the monkey on our own backs to screen platforms and weed out the liars, but so many of them present themselves as honest brokers of news that one almost needs a degree in psychology to figure who’s posting the truth.

Much as it pains him, Bob Neal has quit looking at posts on X — he never was a member but followed some topics — even those showing Patrick Mahomes performing football miracles. Neal can be reached at [email protected].