Dam!

Ma'an "reported" on Friday:

The Gaza government's Disaster Response Committee announced late Friday that Israeli authorities had opened up dams just east of the Gaza Strip, flooding numerous residential areas in nearby villages within the coastal territory.

Committee chairman Yasser Shanti said in a press conference that Israeli authorities had opened up dams just to the east of the border with the Gaza Strip earlier in the day.

He warned that residential areas within the Gaza Valley would be flooding within the coming hours.

And look at that - they did get flooded, just as he predicted! The torrential rains had little to do with the Gazans being under up to 2 meters of water - it was all from Israel keeping huge amounts of water in storage in the Negev, just waiting for the right time to flood Gaza! (Which, coincidentally, happens during rainstorms.)

Iran's PressTV reported the dam story as well, as multiple Gazans told the tall tale:

Followers of this blog may remember that there was flooding in Gaza during a huge rainstorm in 2010, and they blamed Israel opening up a dam then as well.

I looked hard to find any dam between southern Israel (which is, of course, desert) and Gaza. Finally, I found it.

In 2001, a reservoir in Nahal Oz burst, and it did cause some flooding in Gaza. NGO Al Mezan said that the 2010 flooding was caused by the same "dam" that was opened by Israel in 2001, just to make Gazans' lives miserable.

And the "dam" story seemed to grow from there from a simple lie to a complex web of lies.

(h/t Asher)