Israel Hamas 2023

Does a viral social media video show an Iranian attack on a "petrol pump" in Israel in 2023? No, that's not true: The footage is from 2014 and showed an explosion at a gas station in Makhachkala, capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan. The explosion did not happen during the October 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict. It occurred years earlier and…

Did Russian President Vladimir Putin declare in October 2023 that the Kremlin will "openly help to Palestine"? No, that's not true: The footage on social media used to make the claim is a clip from a 2021 recording of Putin speaking at Russia's Victory Day parade. The video predates the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict by more than two years. Putin makes…

Was the same Palestinian child used to stage fake rescue photos from three separate Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on the same day in October 2023? No, that's not true: These three photos were taken in Aleppo, Syria, on August 27, 2016, by photojournalist Ameer Alhalbi. These photos are unrelated to the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict. In the aftermath of…

Did McDonald's change its food wrappers to blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, in support of Israel during the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict? No, that's not true: The fast food chain told Lead Stories that the wrappers were not intended to make a political statement. They come in a variety of colors, not just blue and white, and…

Does a set of nearly-identical videos on social media depict Israeli law enforcement grappling with people in October 2023 in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip or Jerusalem? No, that's not true: The footage was first posted online in April 2023. It shows clashes with Christian pilgrims in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, not in Gaza and predates the Hamas-Israel war by more than…

Did a "Hamas crisis actor" fake a video during the Hamas-Israel conflict in October 2023 that showed him hospitalized one day and walking around OK the next? No, that's not true: The side-by-side videos on social media show two different people. Additionally, one of the videos was shot more than a month earlier -- not the day before the other…

Was a "corpse" in Gaza captured on camera "texting on his phone" in October 2023, amid the Hamas-Israel conflict? No, that's not true: This photo has appeared on social media since at least November 2022 -- 11 months prior to the conflict, which began on October 7, 2023. Lead Stories determined that the photo, which featured a human seemingly sitting…

Are photos showing leaders of Hamas "living luxuriously" generated by artificial intelligence? No, that's not true: The set of images in a viral social media post making that claim already appeared in an article published online in 2014. The person who posted the images in October 2023 later clarified he ran them through an upscaling algorithm in an attempt to…

Was a black flag that appeared over Razavi Shrine in Iran in October 2023 meant to express a "call to all of Islam for War"? No, that's not true: In this particular case, it was a symbol of mourning, as the Facebook account for the shrine itself wrote. While extremist groups have hijacked the symbolism of black flags in recent…

Does a video show a dispute between pro-Palestinian protesters and police in Barcelona, Spain, during the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict? No, that's not true: The video dates back to 2020, almost three years before the conflict arising from Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. According to contemporaneous reports, the people shown in the video were actually protesting against COVID-19 restrictions…