Does a video in a social media post show "Muslim migrants" destroying public property because an Israeli singer was featured in the Eurovision song contest? No, that's not true: The footage shows a 2009 anti-Israel demonstration in Sweden that turned violent. That 2009 demonstration occurred during a tennis tournament and was not related to that year's Eurovision contest, which was held in Moscow.
The claim appeared in a post on X, formerly Twitter, published on May 9, 2024. The post read:
Muslim migrants who were given shelter in Sweden are destroying Swedish tax payers' property because an Israeli singer took part in Eurovision.
I can't think of a dumber and more ungrateful people than these.👇🏼
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
The post on X did not mention what date this footage but the timing of the claim, which was posted during the Eurovision 2024 competition in Sweden, implied that the video was recent in relation to the contest in May 2024.
The Israeli singer the post refers to is Eden Godan, who was booed while on stage while performing in the competition.
A reverse image search (archived here) of the video led Lead Stories to a 2009 YouTube video titled, "Polis drog vapen under kravallerna i malmö." Translated by Google Translate, the Swedish title is "Police drew guns during the riots in Malmö" in English. The video is the same one as in the post on X.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google, visible here (archived here), which led us to a CNN article from March 9, 2009. According to the article, dozens of protestors clashed with police outside the Baltic Arena in Malmö, Sweden, during a tennis tournament as violence started alongside a demonstration against "Israel's recent offensive in Gaza."
Other fact check agencies have also reviewed this claim, including Reuters and Full Fact.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Sweden are here. More Lead Stories fact checks on the Israel-Hamas war are here.
