For more than two years, viral X accounts have posed as witnesses inside Gaza, describing themselves as “on the ground,” “local journalists,” or direct observers of the war. Millions trusted them. Politicians amplified them. News outlets treated them as credible sources. Now, with X’s new country-of-origin and VPN-warning tools, the reality behind these accounts is finally coming into view.
A Breakthrough in Transparency
Between November 20 and 23, 2025, X introduced a new transparency feature that reveals the actual country an account is posting from, along with warnings when a VPN or proxy is masking the true location. This update gives users the context needed to judge whether viral posts reflect genuine eyewitness reporting or commentary coming from somewhere else entirely.
According to reporting from OpenTools, the feature was created to help users identify account authenticity and to make coordinated inauthentic behavior easier to spot.
What the New Tools Revealed
Within the first forty-eight hours of the rollout, dozens of high-impact anti-Israel accounts were exposed. Their stated identities did not match their real locations. Examples include:
• “Gaza Notifications,” which claimed to be reporting from inside Gaza, was actually based in Turkey and had changed its username eighteen times.
• “CounterAIPAC,” which presented itself as an American political account, was based in Egypt.
• Muhammad Smiry, widely described as a “local Palestinian journalist,” was posting from Indonesia.
• Motasem A. Dalloul, another self-identified “Gaza reporter,” was located in Poland and linked to a United Kingdom App Store region.
• “American Voice,” a two hundred and six thousand follower account posing as a U.S. conservative, was based in South Asia with fifteen username changes.
• “Ghada,” a viral account spreading claims of mass starvation, was posting from Egypt and had multiple username changes.
Jewish Voice for Peace, often portrayed as a domestic American movement, was flagged by X for VPN and proxy masking.
Other accounts impersonating Western users were traced to Qatar, Turkey, Yemen, Sudan, and Russia. These findings match X’s stated goal of providing clarity about whether a post comes from a legitimate local source or part of a broader influence effort.
Why This Matters
For more than two years, foreign-operated accounts pretending to be inside Gaza have shaped global opinion, influenced media coverage, and fueled political narratives. Without any transparency about their true locations, users had no way to determine if these posts reflected authentic eyewitness accounts or content designed to manipulate public perception.
Eyal Yakoby captured the significance of the new disclosures when he said that thousands of “Gaza” accounts posting daily about starvation and Israeli crimes “aren’t based in Gaza.” Analyst Eitan Fischberger noted that many of the newly exposed accounts were operating from Turkey and pointed out that Hamas has a substantial presence there. His observation highlights why so many of these accounts adopted Gaza identities while posting from abroad.
The Bottom Line
X’s new transparency tools have confirmed what many suspected. A large share of the viral “Gaza eyewitness” accounts are not eyewitnesses at all. They are foreign operators, activists, or coordinated networks presenting themselves as local reporters while posting from other countries.
In the new era of transparency, one principle stands firm. Do not believe everything you read, especially when an account’s declared identity does not match where it is actually posting from.
