Key Takeaways:
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Al Jazeera falsely claims Israel used prohibited “thermobaric weapons” to “evaporate” 2,842 Palestinians, despite military experts confirming the cited munitions are conventional explosives and not thermobaric – and that even thermobaric weapons do not vaporize bodies.
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The “2,842 vanished” figure is based on speculation, not evidence, relying on Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense estimates that assume missing bodies were “evaporated” if fewer remains were recovered than the reported number of building occupants.
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The investigation leans heavily on Hamas-linked and openly partisan sources, including officials tied to Hamas and advocates who have defended or praised terror operatives, undermining any claim of credible journalism.
Despite its global footprint, the Qatari-run Al Jazeera is not a credible media outlet. The anti-Israel propaganda that it continuously pumps out is hardly surprising. But the outlet’s consistent publishing of explicitly false information and blatantly made-up absurd stories is nonetheless shocking.
According to Al Jazeera’s so-called investigation, “Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate.” Yes, you read that correctly. The jokes could be endless if this article weren’t making its way around social media, with users – including former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth – taking every unfounded statement as fact.
Employing extremely unreliable sources, baseless claims, and outright falsifying facts on weaponry, Al Jazeera portrays Israel as a state that intentionally used weapons to “evaporate” 2,842 Palestinians – a claim that further assists in inflating the casualty narrative without providing evidence.
Israeli Weapons
The “investigation” lists three U.S.-manufactured munitions that have led to the “disappearances,” claiming that Israel is using “internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons.” The problem? None of the three munitions listed is actually a thermobaric weapon.
Military commentator and Jane’s Defence Weekly correspondent Helmoed-Römer Heitman confirmed to HonestReporting that the three munitions listed, the MK-84, BLU-109, and GBU-39, are conventional high-explosive or penetrator munitions – not thermobaric weapons, which operate using a fuel-air dispersal mechanism that these bomb types do not contain. He added that all three bombs are intended for use against structures, producing a straightforward shockwave that can knock down a building. Thermobaric weapons use a different type of destruction mechanism by releasing a cloud of fuel that flows into structures before being detonated. But even thermobaric weapons don’t “vaporize” a body, Heitman said, rather, they remove all of the air out of an area, causing an implosion.
The high-temperature explosion caused by thermobaric weapons makes them heavily regulated by the laws of war, but they are not internationally prohibited, as Al Jazeera claims.
Another military expert further explained that to vaporize a human body, all tissues would need to reach temperatures high enough to turn water and organic matter into gas, and to completely vaporize that mass requires an enormous and sustained energy input, far beyond what most battlefield thermobaric weapons deliver to a single point target. Moreover, even Al Jazeera admits that not all of the body parts had disappeared, writing that there were traces of “blood spray on walls or small fragments,” – an admission that negates the claim of “evaporation.”
Faulty Sources
Naturally, an “investigation” so unsound would need to rely on sources linked to or sympathetic towards Hamas. Needless to say, not the most credible people.
The method of counting the 2,842 “vanished” bodies was apparently done so by the Hamas-run Gaza Civil Defense, according to the Gaza Civil Spokesperson, Mahmoud Bassal (also spelt Basal). Bassal is also active in Hamas’ military wing as an operative in the Zeitoun Battalion of the Izz-ad Din-al Qassam Brigades and, therefore, is hardly an impartial source.
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Bassal said that after an Israeli strike, the Civil Defense would “cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered.” The Civil Defense would ask how many people were home at the time of the strike, and if they recovered fewer intact bodies than the number of people they were told should have been there, those bodies were counted as having been “evaporated.”
In other words, the list was entirely based on the assumption of how many occupants were home at the time of the strike. But given the nature of the war, many people were constantly moving around as the IDF changed its areas of operation to ensure civilian safety, meaning that it would be impossible to know who exactly was home. More than this, if some of the bodies recovered from a strike were still intact, it would be hard to understand why not all were intact, despite being in the same vicinity.
Dr. Munir al-Bursh (also spelt Alboursh or Al-Boursh), director general of the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, was also relied upon for his apparent expertise. Dr. al-Bursh has eulogized Hamas operative Anas al-Sharif, posting a photo together with a caption that called him a “knight of words and images.”
Jewish Onliner has previously exposed Dr. Al-Bursh for his Facebook posts commemorating terrorists and participating in an event that praised October 7, which included Hamas spokesperson Musa Abu Marzouk and Islamic Jihad leader Muhammad al-Hindi.
Al Jazeera also quoted legal expert Diana Buttu, who has called Hamas a “freedom” movement and has previously questioned whether Israelis deserve to be safe. She recently appeared at the Al Jazeera Forum alongside terrorist leaders. Buttu argued that Israel’s use of weapons that “cannot distinguish between combatants and noncombatants” constitutes a “war crime.” Yet Israel has consistently taken measures to ensure the safety of civilians, despite the challenges of urban warfare.
Under the most basic scrutiny, Al Jazeera’s claim that Israel is “evaporating” Palestinians falls apart. What truly evaporated is critical thinking, replaced instead by the reflexive acceptance of any allegation, no matter how absurd, so long as it accuses Israel.
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