Shortly after Hamas militants attacked settlements in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, a video of children imprisoned in cages went viral on social media. We checked to see if these are really small Israelis in the Gaza Strip.
In the 35-second video, five small children can be seen sitting captive in the cages of an ordinary chicken coop. The voice of a man mocking the children is heard off-screen - he speaks a language very similar to Arabic. As reported in the accompanying commentary, this video was posted by militants of the Islamist organization Hamas, which on the morning of October 7 attacked Israel, as a result of which hundreds of civilians were killed, at least dozens more, including children, were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.
In the Russian-language segment of the Internet, videos were distributed by such resources as “News N", Cursorinfo, "Apostrophe", "Island", "Channel 24", as well as numerous Telegram channels, including "Mardan"(714,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Fisherman"(378,000), "Tough shit 18+"(344,000), "Solovyov» (302,000), Colonelcassad (280,000), "Pozdnyakov 3.0" (274,000) and "Truthfulness"(251,000).
The radical Islamist movement Hamas (the European Union, the United States and Israel recognized it as a terrorist organization) on the morning of October 7 caused a series of missile attacks on Israeli territory. At the same time, the militants penetrated into the border settlements of this country, where they staged a real reprisal over the civilian population. Hamas casualties as of October 12 steel about 1,300 Israelis (the vast majority majority - civilians), in Kibbutz Kfar Aza alone there were found several dozen bodies of children. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Jonathan Conricus, citing forensic experts confirmed Earlier media reports indicated that at least several children killed at Kibbutz Be'eri had been beheaded. About 130 hostages, according to preliminary data, were taken out militants into the Gaza Strip, the exact number of minors among them was not disclosed.
The video that went viral soon after this, although it became viral, immediately raised questions regarding the authenticity and possible location of the action. The watermark on all samples on the Internet without exception indicates that the video was published on TikTok by the user @user6903068251281. However, at the time of writing, the link to the original publication did not work, and the account itself was blocked in the first days after the video became popular. The Israeli fact-checking resource FakeReporter conducted an investigation and on October 8–9 posted two screenshot (TikTok video and a photo based on it from the same user on the social network X), on which you can see the date: “Four days ago.” Thus, these videos and photos were posted before the Hamas attack on Israel on the morning of October 7th.
Below both the photo and the video can be seen an Arabic-language hashtag that can literally be translated as “the Chinese have no solution,” an idiomatic expression meaning “they are incorrigible.” Under this humorous hashtag on social networks, people often are published funny videos.
Also under the photo you can see a hashtag with the words “Gaza” and “Palestine”, as well as the names of Middle Eastern states.
Our colleagues from Lead Stories found out that the malicious laughter that accompanies the video is superimposed separately - it is quite often used in other publications on TikTok, including those that appeared in summer 2023. Fact checkers from the project Maldita turned to an Arabic language specialist for help. He said that behind the scenes you can hear the dialect Khaliji, which is common along the coast of the Persian Gulf, but not in Palestine or Israel.
By searching Google for username user6903068251281, you can find another video of his that remains in cache search engine. Judging by the time stamp, it was published on October 8, that is, after the distribution of the sensational recording. In the new video we see four children sitting on the threshold of a house.
Moreover, at least two children from this second video are very similar to the children from the first.
The second video was posted as a response to another user's humorous "Free them before they turn white" comment, apparently posted just below the first video.
On October 11 or 12, the account of TikTok user @user6903068251281, the alleged author of the sensational video, was unblocked. Judging by the photographs and videos published on his profile, the blogger really lives in the Gaza Strip. As it turned out, before the blocking he managed to write down a short message in response to a question from one of the users. appeal, in which he said that the kids depicted in the video are his relatives, and not “children of Zionists.” The video, according to the man, was filmed three days before the attack on Israel on the morning of October 7.
Thus, the viral publication appeared on the Internet even before the attack by Hamas militants on Israel in October 2023, and the Palestinian who posted it, who identified himself as a relative of the children depicted, later published a video with unlocked boys. Most likely, the removal of both videos from TikTok is due to the resonance that the spread of the video with children in cages with an incorrect description caused. It should be noted that some Telegram channels that distributed videos of “children abducted by Hamas” subsequently issued a refutation or updated their publications.
Cover photo: social networks
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