FACT-CHECK: Viral Video Of Israeli Forces Bombing Gaza Building In Retaliation Is MISLEADING
Amid the escalation of tension between Israel and Palestine on Saturday (October 7, 2023), a viral video said to depict retaliatory military strikes in Gaza is misleading, checks by THE WHISTLER has shown.
The video shared on X, formerly Twitter, by @blogsroom, a pro-Israel propaganda account, showed the moment a 2-storey building was hit by a missile.
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The video was captioned, “LATEST: Israel air force bombing a building in #Gaza , #Palestine Israel Retaliating 🔥”
As of the time of writing this report, the video has been viewed more than 800 thousand times.
To verify the authenticity of the video, THE WHISTLER extracted its keyframes and ran them through various reverse-imaging softwares including Google Lens, Yandex, Bing, TinEye and Baidu.
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The earliest result from the reverse-image search revealed that the video was first posted on X by Palestinian political activist, Nour Odeh, on May 13, 2023.
Odeh who did not mention whether the airstike was carried out by Israeli operatives said “the airstrike levelled an entire residential building in Gaza City’s AlZaitoun neighborhood.”
Open source investigators, Chris Osieck & Gabòr Friesen, also used the clip in a report geolocating Aerial Warfare in Gaza on May 28, 2023
Tensions between both countries (Israel and Palestine) escalated on Saturday morning after 2,200 rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
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VERDICT
Although the video appeared to be an Israeli airstrike on Gaza, it was recorded in May, 2023. Therefore the use of the video to depict a retaliatory attack in October, 2023 is MISLEADING.
