Old Israeli swimmers’ formation ‘Bring Them Home Now’ shared as Paris Olympics feat; Fact Check

Posted by: Arun Nag July 29, 2024

An image of women swimmers in artistic category forming a shape of “Bring Them Home Now” is being shared with a claim that the Israeli contingent at the ongoing Paris 2024 Olympics is protesting in a unique way.

The claim reads:”The Israeli Olympic team were not allowed to wear yellow ribbon pins for the hostages during the Paris Olympics. So instead, they did this.(sic)” The formation of “Bring Them Home Now” is visible in the image.

The context is that Hamas have more than 200 Israeli hostages in their captivity still and several nations have been trying to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Coinciding with the Paris Olympics 2024, the image is being shared on social media.

FACT CHECK

To begin with, Digiteye India team checked the image in Google Reverse Image Search and found that it was an old picture being shared as a recent one. Further search on its details revealed that the photograph is from November 2023, when artistic swimmers at Israel’s Wingate Institute created the formation to reiterate their demand for the return of the Israeli hostages.

They raised the slogan ‘Bring Them Home Now’ which has become a catch phrase for many Israeli groups worldwide to demand the release of more than 200 hostages still in captivity of the Hamas, a Palestinian militant group.

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted the original photo on their official Facebook page on Nov. 19, 2023 with a caption that reads:”A beautiful tribute by Israel’s national artistic swimming team in tribute to the 240 hostages being held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. We will not stop until each and every one of them are brought home. Yoav Borowitz”.

The image has also been shared on Instagram here. The photo courtesy shows Adam Spiegel of the Wingate Institute in Israel with the details that the athletes formed the “Bring Them Home Now” message in the national pool last year in November. Next to it is seen another formation in a Star of David, representing the flag of Israel.

Hence, an old image has been falsely shared as the recent one at Paris Olympics.

Claim: Israeli swimmers formed a shape of “Bring Them Home Now” at Paris Olympics.

Conclusion: Misrepresentation. Old image of Israeli swimmers was shared as recent feat at Paris Olympics.

Rating: Misrepresentation —

About Arun Nag

Arun is with Digiteye India since the beginning as the main source for re-writing copies and re-checking the facts and images. He writes on general and tech issues. He can be reached at arunnag@digiteye.in

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