DigitEye India Fact Checkers
As the Israel-Hamas conflict intensifies with each passing day, many unrelated videos being linked to the conflict are going viral on social media. Recently, a video that shows people staging an attack on a person is going viral on social media.
The viral video shows a film crew standing around a child lying on his back with his legs and arms twisted. The child is surrounded by military personnel. The claim that is being shared with the video claims that,
See how Israelis are making fake videos saying that Palestine Freedom Fighters killed children.
Digiteye India received a request to fact-check this viral video on WhatsApp.
FACT CHECK
The Digiteye India team broke the video down into multiple keyframes and ran a Reverse Image Search on all of them. The results led us to multiple tweets on X where people had shared the same video with similar claims. One of the tweets claimed that the video was from a BTS video of a film shoot.
The video shows a TikTok username on the left-hand side. We used that username and conducted a keyword search on Google using relevant keywords. One of the results led us to the Instagram page of Mohamad Awawdeh who is a cinematographer. We used this clue and searched for more results on Google.
One of the results led us to a short film on YouTube. The film titled, Empty Place (available on Youtube) was directed by Awni Eshtaiwe, a Palestine-based filmmaker. The description of the film reads, “This film is a window overlooking the vacant places left behind all those who left because of the occupation, not only Ahmad Manasrah, but rather 105.000 other ’empty place’ of martyrs and injured in Palestine. The short film was uploaded on YouTube on April 19, 2022.
The film is based on the life of Ahmed Mansara who was arrested for allegedly stabbing two Israeli settlers near the illegal settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015.
The scene from the viral video can be seen at 1:10 minute onwards. The camera zooms out from the face of the same child as in the viral video. The footwear of the people in the viral video matches the ones seen in the final short film. Speaking to Reuters, Awni Eshtaiwe confirmed that the viral video is from his short film – Empty Place.
The claim is, hence, false.
CLAIM: A viral video shows how Israel is faking the death of its citizens by shooting staged videos.
CONCLUSION: The viral video is from the Behind-The-Scenes footage of a short film that was directed by a Palestinian director, Awni Eshtaiwe. The shot is from a short film called Empty Place which is based on the real-life story of a Palestinian citizen who was jailed for allegedly stabbing two Israeli citizens.
RATING: ??? – Misrepresentation
