On October 11, verified X account Random Memes posted a video it claimed was filmed that day in Israeli-besieged Gaza. The post received some 269K views and nearly 10K reposts, quotes and likes.
That same video was posted hours earlier by another anonymous X user, Juicycotre. It has had more than 2 million views and some 40K reactions.
The video has been trending on X with hashtags like “Gaza” and “TheRealImage.” Thousands of users shared the posts, claiming that the video showed Palestinian children in Israeli-besieged Gaza.
User Random Memes added a caption to the video in Arabic and Hebrew that translates into English as:
“’I dream that my brother comes back to life” – “Children of Gaza 10/11/2023”
The claim that the video was recently filmed in Gaza is false.
A France 24 team shot the video in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp, near Damascus, in 2013. At the time, Yarmouk was under a blockade by Syrian government forces, preventing humanitarian aid from reaching thousands of civilians trapped inside the camp.
The video has been circulating among social media platforms along with similar false claims that it was filmed recently in Gaza. It is being pushed mainly by anonymous accounts and users displaying Palestinian flags and using “FreePalestine” hashtags. These similarities suggest a coordinated disinformation campaign.
As Polygraph.info previously reported, the outbreak of hostilities between Hamas and Israel has been accompanied by a sharp increase in disinformation and propaganda on social media, with Hamas or its supporters attempting to control the narrative.
