Does a video clip shared by the official account of the State of Israel show 23,000 tons of tents and shelter equipment that were trucked into Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023? No, that's not true: This is a stock video clip that shows a refugee camp in Palanca, Moldova which was uploaded to iStock by Getty Images on March 21, 2022. After it was posted in 2024 by the official account of the State of Israel, attention was called to this misleading use of the Moldova footage, and the account deleted the post. A new post was made by Israel stating that the "photo was for illustrative purposes" and that, "Moving forward, we will do our best to ensure transparency in the visuals that we post."
The video was first posted by the official account of the State of Israel @israel on February 4, 2024. Another copy of the video (archived here) was posted by the account of the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN, OSCE & Intl. Organizations in Vienna @ILMissionVienna, on February 5, 2024. Both of the posts had the same caption:
- 11,000 trucks
- 140,000 tons of food
- 17,000 tons of medical supplies
- 23,000 tons of tents and shelter equipment
Israel will continue to facilitate the transfer of life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Our war is with Hamas, not with the people of Gaza.
#FreeGazaFromHamas
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
The video is 30 seconds long; the clip with the refugee camp begins at 21 seconds in. The captioning on the video follows the voice narration, and says:
Israel does not limit the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter Gaza. Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th over 11,000 trucks of humanitarian aid have entered Gaza carrying over 140,000 tons of food, over 1000 water trucks, almost 17,000 tons of medical supplies, and approximately 23,000 tons of tents and shelter equipment. We are at war with Hamas, not the people of Gaza.
On February 12, 2024, a post made by Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist with BBC Verify, featured a screenshot of the tents shown in the video along with a screenshot of the video clip as it appears on a stock image site. Sardarizadeh's post is captioned:
The official state of Israel account has posted this video, saying it is facilitating aid into Gaza.
A short clip at the end of the video, claiming to show tents and shelter equipment for Gazans, was actually filmed in March 2022, showing tents in Moldova for Ukrainian refugees.
Lead Stories located this stock video clip using Google Lens reverse image search. The clip was uploaded to the "iStock by Getty Images" website on March 21, 2022 (pictured below left). The portion of the clip in question (pictured below right) begins about seven seconds into the stock clip, as a group of people step onto a gravel road in the lower left of the frame. The iStock description under the clip reads:
Land arranged on the territory of Moldova with tents near the border of Ukraine for refugees coming from the war in Ukraine. Refugee camp with many shelter and living place. Refugees from Ukraine.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with iStock and X screenshots taken on Wed Feb 14 21:58:50 2024 UTC)
A series of eight aerial videos showing this refugee camp are posted on iStock, but none of them specify the location of this camp within Moldova. A Google image search for "Refugee camp Moldova March 2022" brought up images of a camp with similar blue tents (here and here), which were labeled as Palanca, Moldova. The undated instantstreetview.com satellite image of Palanca (below right) does not show the camp, but one of the iStock aerial clips of the camp (below left) has clearly identifiable features that show in the satellite image. Palanca is located just over a mile into Moldova from the border of Ukraine.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with iStock and instantstreetview.com Google satellite image screenshots taken on Wed Feb 14 22:20:01 2024 UTC)
After Sardarizadeh made the post pointing out the misleading video clip on February 12, 2024, he posted an update stating that "The official state of Israel account has now deleted the post."
On February 13, 2024, @Israel reposted Sardarizadeh's post and posted a clarification that said:
Yesterday it was brought to our attention that one of our videos about humanitarian aid in Gaza featured a photo from Moldova.
The photo was for illustrative purposes and we should have stated that in the video.
Moving forward, we will do our best to ensure transparency in the visuals that we post.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks related to the Hamas-Israel war that began on October 7, 2023, can be found here.
