When Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst asked the Israeli military about the source of the photo, the military admitted that it was fake. “Unfortunately there isn’t really a picture of it, it was photoshopped,” the military said in a statement. Israel has a long history of lying about journalists, who are protected in conflict under international law. In Gaza, Israel repeatedly claimed that the nearly 300 Palestinian journalists and media workers it killed in the genocide were affiliated with Hamas, without any evidence. This includes when Israeli forces killed well-known Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul in Gaza in 2024. The military claimed that al-Ghoul received a military rank in Hamas in 2007, when the journalist was only 10 years old.