An old video of Yazidi Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil talking about the atrocities committed by terrorist group 'Islamic State' against the Yazidi community in Iraq is being shared with a false claim that it shows an Israeli woman narrating her experience when she was held captive by Islamic militant group Hamas.
At least 1,403 Israelis and over 5700 Palestinians have been killed so far in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas which began on October 7, 2023, after the militant group attacked and killed Israeli forces and took nearly 200 hostages.
In the viral video the woman can be heard talking about graphic and disturbing details, like a woman whose one year old son was cooked and fed to her when she was held captive, and instance of another a girl being raped to death in front of her father and sisters.
The caption when translated from Hindi reads, "The Israeli woman told that she was in captivity of Hamas terrorists for three days. After three days he brought me rice and meat curry to eat. I was very hungry, after I had eaten I was told that this meat dish was prepared by cutting your one year old child, whom we had snatched from you."
(In Hindi - इजराइली महिला ने बताया कि वह तीन दिनों से हमास के आतंकियों की कैद में थी। तीन दिन बाद वो मेरे लिए चावल और मीट की सब्जी खाने के लिए लाए । मै बहुत भूखी थी, मेरे खाने के बाद मुझे बताया की यह मीट की सब्जी तुम्हारे एक साल के उस बच्चे को काटकर बनाई गई थी, जिसे हमने तुमसे छीना था।)
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The same video is also being shared with the same false claim widely on Facebook.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video is from a 2017 interview of Yazidi Iraqi MP Vian Dakhil with Egyptian channel Extra where she talking about the atrocities committed by Islamic State terrorists in Iraq on Yazidi women and other captives taken by the terrorists.
Taking a hint from "Translated by MEMRI TV" written on the left hand corner of the video, we found that the original video was posted in 2017.
It has Dakhil narrating the sexual abuse and cases of rape she heard of Yazidi victims committed by IS terrorists when they were holding them captive.
The sequence in the viral video is the same as in this 2017 interview.
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MEMRI is a digital organisation based in Washington DC and its founder is a former Israeli military intelligence officer Yigal Carmon. MEMRI is a controversial outlet that propagates stereotypes about Middle Eastern communities and has a history of putting out misinformation according to Media Bias / Fact Check, which is an American website that uses a methodology to rate media outlets.
On searching with selected keywords, we found several other media outlets that had reported the same video of Dakhil back in June 2017. They mention the same horrific details on IS terrorists raping Yazidi women captives in Iraq.
During the IS onslaught on the Yazidi community in 2014, Dakhil, the only elected woman Yazidi MP in the Iraqi parliament, had then made a tear-filled plea to save her people which had gone viral and caught the world's atattention. Since then she has been a renowned Yazidi politician speaking against IS and against the persecution that her community has faced under the terrorist group.
We also independently verified the English subtitles in the viral video and found that the translation is accurate.
We can see the whole original interview on EXtra news here.
