#They lied to you: Palestinians use digital campaign to remind world Gaza ceasefire is an ‘illusion’
Nagham Zbeedat reports in Haaretz on 23 July 2026:
A new digital campaign led by Palestinian journalists and activists is seeking to return international attention to Gaza and to highlight that, although the United States declared a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel on October 10, 2025, the agreement has not eased Israeli attacks nor the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s blockade.
The hashtag campaign “They Lied to You” first appeared on social media in English and Arabic on July 16, though its original creator remains unclear. Since then, thousands of posts have filled social networks including footage and testimonies from journalists, humanitarian workers, content creators and everyday people from Gaza.
Renad Attallah, a 12-year-old from Deir al-Balah who gained international attention for posting videos to Instagram of herself cooking through the 2025 famine, pleaded Wednesday to her 1.6 million followers to direct their attention back to Gaza’s bloody reality: “the World Cup is over, so we have more space to talk about the important things.”
Since the World Cup began on June 11, “Israel has killed more than 118 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Entire families have been wiped out, with no one [left] behind,” says Attallah, who evacuated to the Netherlands from the Strip last year, while her mother remains in Gaza. “The killing has not stopped. Only destruction, killing and blood. Where is the cease-fire? There is no cease-fire. They lied to you.”
According to the latest figures released by Gaza’s Health Ministry, 1,127 Palestinians have been killed and 3,643 wounded since the cease-fire went into effect on October 10. Rescue crews have also recovered the bodies of approximately 800 people from beneath rubble during that period. The ministry says the war’s cumulative death toll stands at 73,250, with another 173,751 people wounded. The Government Media Office in Gaza has separately recorded 3,689 alleged Israeli violations of the cease-fire.
Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal, who participated in the campaign, wrote on X that continued attacks made the term “cease-fire” increasingly detached from conditions on the ground. “What kind of cease-fire is this, when children are still being killed, homes are being bombed, tents are being targeted, and families are grieving every day?” Basal wrote. “A genuine cease-fire means that the killing stops, the bombardment falls silent, children sleep without fear, and people return to their lives. But in Gaza, the airstrikes are continuing, and civilians are still paying the price day after day.”
Children receiving medical treatment and living in displacement camps have also appeared in campaign videos. In one clip, children rejected claims that the war had ended, listing hunger, destruction, deprivation of education, bombardment and the loss of relatives and neighbors as continuing features of life in Gaza.
“They lied to you. They said the scene was over, that Gaza had disappeared from the news, and that the sound of bombardment had faded. But the reality we are living is different,” Palestinian activist and content creator Osaid al-Kahlout said in a video. (Al-Kalhout is a brother of Abu Obeida, the former spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing who was assassinated by the IDF in August 2025.)
“The sounds of explosions continue, along with the signs of destruction, the suffering of families and the fear of children who are still living amid war, devastation, bombardment and artillery fire,” he added. “The story is not over. Gaza is not a number in a news bulletin, and its people are not a passing headline.”
‘Nowhere to hide’
When the cease-fire was announced last fall, Mahmoud Shalhob told his four children they could finally leave their tent in Gaza City’s al-Shati refugee camp and return to their damaged home farther north in Beit Lahia. The family covered the shattered windows with plastic and placed their mattresses on the floor. Then, on April 23, two months after their return, an Israeli strike hit the city, killing Shalhob’s cousin and forcing the family of five to flee again.
“The bombing became less frequent, but death remained,” Shalhob tells Haaretz. “The cease-fire was for the people outside, not for us here.” Now displaced to a tent in Deir al-Balah, Shalhob’s family of five lives with the constant fear of further displacement and the sound of nearby strikes.
The campaign was launched as Israeli attacks intensified across the enclave. On the night of July 16, strikes hit Gaza City and Khan Yunis, killing five, according to local officials and journalists in Gaza. “The entire people of Gaza have not lived a single day or a single moment of cease-fire. This cease-fire is an illusion,” Jibril Khattab, a relative of one of the victims, told Reuters in Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital on July 16.
Andadolu Agency correspondent and researcher Ali Abo Rezeg described it as one of the most violent nights in Gaza since the cease-fire was announced. He said the campaign coincided with the escalating attacks and growing calls for protests and other public action intended to restore international attention to Gaza.
Sujood, a 32-year-old mother of four, was inside her family’s tent in Al-Mawasi, near Rafah, last week on July 14 when Israeli forces opened fire toward nearby tents. “We suddenly heard gunfire. I pulled my children toward me, and people began shouting and trying to find somewhere to hide,” she says.
Four Palestinians were killed that day in Khan Yunis and Rafah, including 10-year-old Mu’taz Abu Sha’ar, who was shot inside his family’s displacement tent and later died of his wounds. His father and brother were killed earlier in the war, leaving his mother to mourn another member of her immediate family. “It happened during the day, when people were awake and children were outside,” Sujood says. Her family had already been displaced to Al-Mawasi in search of safety.
“Where am I supposed to take four children now? We live beneath a sheet of fabric. There is no door to close and nowhere to hide. Mu’taz was shot inside the tent his family had fled to. When they say there is a cease-fire, I don’t know what they expect us to call this.”
Ahmad Hamdan, an independent journalist based in Beit Hanoun, wrote on X that the war had not ended but had instead receded from the forefront of news coverage as international priorities shifted.
Yousef al-Damouky, a writer and journalist based in Turkey, similarly said Gaza had not stopped “bleeding,” describing residents as having reached “the ultimate dividing line between life and death.” Renewed attention, he argued, may not be enough to stop Israeli attacks, but could document their consequences and build public pressure.
For Shalhob, the war will not have ended merely when the strikes become less frequent. It will end when families can return home without being displaced again, the wounded can obtain treatment and parents can put their children to bed without preparing to flee. “It would mean the strikes will stop from falling on us, and for food to be back on the shelves,” Shalhob says. “It would mean that we get to go back home and rebuild it.”
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