In October 2023, a video was widely circulated on the Internet, allegedly showing a doll instead of a dead Palestinian child. We checked whether these claims are substantiated.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and subsequent retaliatory strikes on the Gaza Strip killed thousands of Israelis and Gaza residents, many of them civilians. By October 22 known about at least 1,400 Israelis killed, the Hamas-run Gaza Interior Ministry, reports about more than 4,500 dead in this territory (it is currently not possible to confirm Palestinian data).
On October 13, a 17-second video appeared on the official accounts of the State of Israel on social networks (in the video, a man passes the body of a child wrapped in a shroud to another man) and a still frame from this video, in which the child’s face is highlighted in a red circle. “Hamas accidentally published a video of a doll (yes, a doll), claiming that it was one of the victims of an attack by the Israeli armed forces,” according to related publications in Instagram (53,000 likes) and X (former Twitter, 1.4 million views at the time of writing this analysis, 7800 reposts).
In Russian, the information was disseminated in X, and then on Telegram with a note that the video was soon removed from Hamas channels. In particular, the channels wrote about the “puncture of Hamas” AZFront (205,000 views), "IsraelDust"(94,000), "Bild in Russian" (55,000) and "Eastern syndrome"(35,000), some of these messages were shared, in particular, by the editor-in-chief of the Dozhd TV channel Tikhon Dzyadko and political scientist Abbas Gallyamov. The plot fell into line German And Azerbaijani Media, from Russian media about video wrote "New news". On October 21, the story about the doll was mentioned by Yulia Latynina in on air his channel on YouTube - part of the stream was dedicated to fakes from Hamas, transcript published on the website of the publication "Echo".
Searching for a video source using Google Lens results in tweet dated October 15, which claims that the video was filmed and posted on Instagram by user X @momen1_0, and also that there are photographs confirming the authenticity of the event taken by AFP photographer Mohammed Abed.
The account @momen1_0 on the social network X, judging by the profile description, belongs to the Palestinian photographer Mamun al-Halebi. He actually blogs on Instagram, which is where the original was published on October 12 video clip. The high-definition video lasts several seconds longer than the viral one, at the beginning it shows the entrance to the hospital in more detail, and there is a watermark on the video (it was also preserved in posts published the next day on official Israeli accounts).
Viewing the page element code on Instagram allows you to determine the exact loading time - 13:59 GMT (16:59 Moscow time), but presumably related with Hamas channels in Telegram, which was studied by “Verified”, this video appeared not earlier than at 20:38 on the same day. IN archives There are basically no traces of the video on the official channel of the group (the link to it is listed on the website).
Together, these data refute the claim that has spread on the Russian-language Internet that the video was originally published by Hamas channels and subsequently deleted when the forgery was discovered. At the time of writing this analysis, the video is still available on the above-mentioned Telegram channels associated with the group and on the page of Mamun al-Halebi.
High-definition footage posted by al-Halebi shows an ambulance marked Ahli Arab Hospital Gaza, a car from which two children are being carried out, and a hospital building with a sign and the Red Cross emblem. Search by keywords and Reuters photo bank allowed to geolocate the place - this is Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, and in the frame is the entrance to the emergency department.
Fact checkers came to the same conclusions regardless of “Verified” AFP. They also confirmed that the agency’s photographer, Mohammed Abed, took several photographs on October 12 of people who were also captured by al-Halebi. On the same day, a man in a gray T-shirt was photographed by a newspaper correspondent Times of Gaza. Abed said that the photographs were taken at Al-Shifa Hospital, next to the morgue, and also expressed confidence that this is the real body of the deceased child, and not a doll. AFP reports that the photographer took about 20 photographs of the scene, some of which are available on photo banks AFP and Getty Images.
A number of Internet users distributing the video of the child noticed that he had something resembling cotton wool or a piece of cotton in his mouth - this, in their opinion, proves the falsification of the video. However this standard element Muslim rite of farewell to the deceased.
In addition, Mamun al-Halebi, who posted the original video, told the publications India Today And AltNews the name and age of the deceased child, and also sent a photograph of the corpse taken from a closer distance. Details photo (the nature of the damage and the rings on the hands of the man lifting the body) coincide with the details in the video and make it possible to verify that this is not a doll.
Thus, all available evidence refutes the claim that the video of the doll was staged. The video is real, it shows a child who died in Gaza on October 12. This is also confirmed by photographs taken by several photographers working independently of each other. At the same time, the claim that the video was accidentally distributed and then deleted by the administrators of Hamas Telegram channels is false.
Cover photo: Times of Gaza
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