DigitEye India Fact Checkers
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas is hitting the headlines, several videos and false claims are circulating in social media and here is one such which has a narrative that the Palestinians are attacking churches now. This followed after the bombing of the Baptist Hospital in Gaza city that killed more than 500 people.
The video shows armed men vandalising a church with a claim that it shows Hamas group destroying a Baptist church in Gaza City. Soon, it has gone viral with claims, counterclaims and remarks triggering communal tensions over the attack on church.
The claim reads: “#HamasTerrorists destroying a Baptist Church in #Gaza city and kicking the statue of Jesus, is this their fight to reclaim their land or is it Jihad against every other religion in this world, ask yourselves.”
FACT CHECK
When our team took it up the video clip for fact checking as several such claims surfaced whenever conflicts or group clashes took place in any part of the world. First, we took key frames of the video using In-Vid tool and searched for the source in Google Reverse Image Search and found the 6-year-old original video on Youtube.
The original video was uploaded in 2017 pertaining to an incident in the Philippines where the Islamic State militants allegedly set afire a church building. It was widely reported in local media here and here.
Hence, the claim is totally false.
Claim: Video clip showing “Hamas Terrorists destroying a Baptist Church in Gaza city and kicking the statue of Jesus”
Conclusion: False, an old 2017 video from the Philippines used to pass off as that in Gaza city now.
Rating: Totally False — 
