What was claimed
A photo shows a Palestinian child with facial injuries sustained in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Our verdict
The image is of a little girl in the US with a rare condition that can cause port wine stain birthmarks.
Photo shows US girl with birthmark, not injured Palestinian baby
24 October 2023
Posts on X (formerly Twitter) features a photo of a baby with marks on her face with captions implying the little girl was injured in the recent Israel-Gaza conflict.
But this photo is of an American girl called Bianca, now five, who was born with port wine stains caused by a rare condition called Sturge Weber syndrome.
The photo was published by several media outlets in a 2019 story about comments her mother received about the birthmarks from strangers.
In 2022, a Facebook page run by her family that chronicled her life and treatment shared a fact check about the image, saying: “Not sure if you all remembered when Bink’s laser picture went viral because some claimed she was a victim of the Palestinian war [...] We still can’t believe this happened.”
This claim has been spreading since at least 2021 on both X and Facebook, but has recently reemerged on social media since the latest conflict broke out.
We have written about other false claims based on misleading images and videos surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict. It’s important to check images and videos are genuine before sharing them, especially during developing news events like this. We’ve written blogs on how to fact check misleading images and videos that can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because the baby pictured was not injured in the Israel-Gaza conflict but is an American girl with port wine stains caused by a rare condition.