Did you see a claim on social media this week that Hamas is holding 500 Americans hostage in Gaza? It’s gone viral, with some of the biggest accounts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, claiming the White House admitted the stunning number recently. But it’s simply not true.
The false claim that 500 Americans are being held hostage in Gaza can likely be traced to Mario Nawfal, an X user who often goes viral with sensationalist claims on the social media platform.
“JUST IN: The White House admitted Hamas is holding nearly 500 Americans hostage in Gaza. Via: U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee,” Nawfal tweeted on Tuesday.
And while Nawfal didn’t provide a link to Blackburn’s claim, if you take a look at Sen. Blackburn’s X account, you can see a similar claim on her official account.
“The White House admitted Hamas is holding nearly 500 Americans hostage in Gaza,” Blackburn tweeted on Tuesday.
But Blackburn is incorrect about the number of hostages being held by Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces have said 230 people are being held by Hamas in Gaza, according to the latest figures released by the IDF. And obviously not every one of those 230 people are Americans.
Where did Blackburn get this number that 500 Americans were being held in Gaza? It appears the senator is conflating the number of Americans trapped in Gaza right down during the Israel-Hamas war with the number of hostages.
The Washington Post reported on October 20 that about 500 Americans were stuck in Gaza, unable to leave since nobody is allowed to leave the territory right now.
“Separately, the Biden administration believes that about 500 Americans are trapped inside Gaza, not as hostages but because they were there when the Hamas attack occurred and have been unable to leave amid the Israeli military’s retaliation,” the Washington Post reported at the time.
Why can’t Americans leave Gaza? According to the White House, Hamas is stopping people from leaving via the Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt. But journalists report that’s not the case and that Israel and Egypt are the ones who seem to be holding up the opening of the border crossing.
“Of the many civilians The Washington Post has contacted inside Gaza who are waiting to leave, none has said that Hamas or anyone else has physically prevented them from crossing. But the border gate is not operational,” the Washington Post reported on October 28.
Spencer Hurwitz, a spokesperson for Sen. Blackburn, told me over email that, “Under 18 U.S. CODE § 1203, the some 500 Americans being held in Gaza are hostages. Plain and simple.”
But the CBS News story that Hurwitz linked to in his email doesn’t claim the Americans stuck in Gaza are hostages, but says they’re “trapped,” which is accurate.
“The U.S. government estimates that between 500 and 600 Americans are among the roughly 2.3 million people trapped in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has completely sealed off since the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers launched their unprecedented terror attack on October 7,” according to CBS News.
“While hundreds of Americans have been flown out of Israel since then, not a single person — with the exception of four hostages released by Hamas — has been allowed to leave Gaza,” CBS News continued.
Again, it’s not at all clear that Hamas is keeping people from leaving, though the White House has made that claim in the past. As the Washington Post explained, there’s no evidence Hamas is keeping the Rafah crossing closed right now.
At least 1,400 people in Israel were killed during the coordinated terror attacks by Hamas on October 7, including both Israelis and foreign nationals. At least 8,306 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing war, including 3,457 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. It’s not immediately clear how many of the people killed in Gaza were foreign nationals or dual passport holders.
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