Moshe Lavi, whose relatives have been taken hostage by Hamas, recently talked to a group of New York Times journalists about his family’s agony.

His pained voice turned to anger when he recounted encountering disbelief that Hamas committed terrible atrocities when it attacked Israel. Lavi seemed especially bewildered by people “arguing over the semantics” of whether people were beheaded or their heads fell off, or even whether there were hostages in Gaza.

In one particularly gruesome twist, there’s been an uproar over whether Hamas had beheaded babies — an unverified claim that President Biden repeated before the White House walked it back, and has been subject to much discussion since.

Indeed, since Hamas did murder children and take others as hostages, should it get credit if it didn’t also behead them? It’s an appalling thought.

Some of this skepticism is surely the result of antisemitism. But that’s not all that’s going on.

One key reason for some of the incidents of doubt is the suspicion that horrendous but false or exaggerated claims are being used as a rationale for war — and there are many such historical examples, most notably the Iraq war.

Recently, a former permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations told Britain’s Sky News that he was “very puzzled by the constant concern which the world,” he said, “is showing for the Palestinian people.” He cited U.S. actions after Sept. 11 as a model for what Israel should do in response to Hamas’s shocking massacre of civilians on Oct. 7, which many have called Israel’s Sept. 11.