Does a video shared on social media show an Israeli police raid on a synagogue to arrest a Jewish youth who supports Palestinian rights in the days following the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023? No, that's not true: The same video was shared on YouTube about 22 months earlier. The clip has nothing to do with the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X (formerly Twitter) by Sulaiman Ahmed on October 15, 2023. The post's caption said:
ZIONIST ISRAELI POLICE RAIDING A SYNAGOGUE TO ARREST JEWISH YOUTH WHO SUPPORT PALESTINIAN RIGHTS
Zionism is antisemitism
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 19 16:46:51 2023 UTC)
The video
A video on YouTube (archived here) showing a slightly longer version of the same clip was published on December 2, 2021, about 22 months before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. It can be seen below:
The video's title and description are written in Hebrew. According to Google Translate, the title says, "Watch | A false arrest, in the middle of Hillel." The description reads:
During a police raid to remove graffiti of Palestinian flags in the Mea Shearim neighborhood, the police entered the Stiblach Toledot Avraham Yitzchak and violently picked up an innocent young man who had just finished praying.
The incident happened on Wednesday the 27th of 2015 at 9:00 in the morning
Mea Shearim neighborhood
Additionally, the presence of Palestinian flags and graffiti in Mea Shearim, an ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem since 1874 -- predating the formation of Israel in 1948 -- is not a recent development and is unrelated to the 2023 conflict. Many members of this community reject the notion of the state of Israel and believe it should belong to the Palestinians. A story on the Covering Religion website says:
Dozens of Palestinian flags are painted up and down the ancient walls. The red, green, black and white colors of the flag adorn the outsides of buildings, walls and doors. But this is not the West Bank or Gaza. These flags are painted in the heart of Jerusalem, in one of the most ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in all of Israel.
Welcome to Mea She'arim, just a short walk from the Old City of Jerusalem. Inside its narrow winding passages is one of the first Jewish neighborhoods built outside the Old City. Dating back to the Ottoman Empire, this community is home to many who not only reject Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, but go so far as to claim the state of Israel should not exist at all based solely on their religious interpretation.
A Google News search (archived here) shows a long history of Israeli governments removing Palestinian flags and graffiti from the community. This video on Facebook (archived here) shows one such instance:
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Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to the 2023 Hamas-Israel conflict can be found here.
