US Air Force photo falsely tied to Israel-Hamas war

"The third batch of American aid to the Palestinian children has arrived," says a December 5, 2023 post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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Screenshot of a post on X taken December 8, 2023

Similar claims circulated on Instagram after nearly two months of Israeli ground and air strikes in the Gaza Strip -- and amid pressure on the Biden administration to urge its ally to limit civilian casualties.

The war began after Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people and took some 240 hostages on October 7, according to Israeli figures. The country responded with an offensive to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, reducing much of Gaza to rubble.

More than 18,400 have people been killed in the Palestinian territory -- mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The United Nations estimates 1.9 million have been displaced.

The United States has supported Israel throughout the conflict, but the image shared online does not show a recent shipment of munitions -- it is nearly a decade old.

A reverse image search on Google surfaced a web page from the US Air Force with an identical picture (archived here). The same image also appears in the US military's public media database (archived here).

Both websites indicate the photo was taken October 23, 2014 at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea.

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Screenshot of the Kunsan Air Base website taken December 11, 2023

"More than 80 Blu-109 and Mark-84 bombs sit on display at the Wolf Pack Munitions Storage Area, Kunsan Air Base, Republic of Korea, following a successful emergency destruction of munitions simulation, Oct. 23, 2014," the caption says.

An October 28, 2014 press release from Kunsan Air Base (archived here) says teams handled and destroyed ammunition and "bomb pallets."

The military describes BLU-109 and MK 84 as "general purpose bombs" used in Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) (archived here).

US support for Israel

The United States has supplied Israel with more than 70,000 weapons since 1950, according to an Axios analysis of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Arms Transfers Database (archived here).

JDAM kits -- which convert unguided bombs into precision-guided, air-to-surface munitions -- are the most common.

The Pentagon told AFP on December 8 that since October 2023, it has provided "precision-guided munitions, Iron Dome interceptors and systems, 155mm artillery ammo and other munitions and medical support equipment."

The Pentagon did not specify what types of munitions it has sent to Israel.

However, the Israeli government in 2021 inked a commercial deal with US aerospace giant Boeing for JDAM kits. Deliveries were scheduled over several years, but they have accelerated since Hamas attacked Israel, Bloomberg reported in October (archived here).

A December report from Amnesty International found evidence that Israel had used US-manufactured JDAM kits in its air strikes on Gaza (archived here).

There is no evidence the United States has provided similar munitions to Hamas. It has, however, welcomed the passage of humanitarian convoys to Gaza facilitated by Egypt, Israel and the United Nations (archived here).

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war here.