A 2020 video showing youngsters fleeing a mock funeral in Jordan has surfaced in the backdrop of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine with claims that it shows Palestinians faking a funeral to grab international attention and press.
The video shows visuals of a few people carrying a body for a funeral; moments later when alarm sirens can be heard in the background the men carrying the body flee, even the man who was pretending to be deceased gets up from the stretcher that was carrying him and flees.
Twitter users are falsely linking the viral clip to Gaza with claims that Palestinians pretended to carry a funeral for 'international sympathy'.
The worst fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in seven years intensified on Tuesday night, as Israeli airstrikes began targeting Hamas offices in Gaza City and militants in Gaza fired rockets at the metropolis of Tel Aviv, the southern city of Ashkelon and Israel's main airport, reported the New York Times. The surge in strikes, the worst since 2014, brought fear to millions in Gaza and Israel. The clashes were escalated after Israeli forces raided the Al Aqsa mosque (Jerusalem) on May 10 to disperse crowds and protesters.
The viral clip was shared by an Instagram account the.israel.files with the caption, "This is a major part of the problem. A continued Palestinian Arab propaganda effort ('pallywood') to elicit international sympathy knows no bounds, and far too many international media outlets and social media personalities are taking the bait. A video shows a 'dead body' in #Gaza which magically comes back to life." The clip has since been deleted.
Several Twitter users tweeted a screen recording of this Instagram to claim that it shows people of Gaza faking deaths. The video was shared by columnist Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, former journalist Soumyadipta and the senior editor Pramod Kumar Singh.
Click here for an archive of Mitra's tweet.
BOOM also received the video on its WhatsApp tipline number for verification.
Video Is From Jordan
BOOM ran a reverse image search and was directed to an article by Arabic news website Youm7 featuring the same video published on March 24, 2020.
According to the news report, young Jordanians devised a trick to get out of their homes during the strict Coronavirus lockdown in 2020. They decided to conduct a mock funeral and put one of their friends in it as if he was the deceased. But as soon as they heard sirens and the police approaching them, they left the funeral and fled. Even the young man, who represented the deceased rose to join them, before his arrest. The same video was also uploaded by Abu-Dhabi based news portal 24.ae.
The video was tweeted by a user with the same narrative on March 24, 2020.
While BOOM could not independently verify the location of the video, we were able to ascertain that the viral clip is not from recent clashes being reported between Palestine and Israel.
