According to data compiled by Brandwatch, a technology firm that tracks discussions on social media, the #IsraelUnderFire hashtag has been used in more than 36,200 tweets and 660 Facebook posts in the past week.

James Lovejoy, a Brandwatch researcher, notes that those on social networks who are more sympathetic to Palestinians have used the hashtags #GazaUnderAttack and #FreePalestine more during the same period. Since July 7, the #GazaUnderAttack hashtag has been used 622,000 times and #FreePalestine has racked up more than 220,000 mentions. An anecdotal measure of how mainstream the #FreePalestine hashtag has become is that even celebrities like Dwight Howard, the basketball player, and Rihanna, the singer, posted tweets with the slogan — although both subsequently removed the comments from their feeds after criticism.

As BBC News reported, the success of the #GazaUnderAttack hashtag has been undercut somewhat by the use of images in some posts that were later shown to have been taken during previous instances of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or in other parts of the Middle East, like Syria and Iraq.