At the end of October 2023, an image allegedly appeared on social networks of the first page of the latest issue of the British publication, on which the countries of the world were divided into those who favor an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East and those who are against. We decided to check if this picture is true.
An image of a supposedly recent issue of The Independent began to circulate in the Russian-language segment of the Internet on October 27. According to the bloggers who published the picture, this is an illustration of the fact that only three countries support the continuation of the war in the Middle East: Israel, the USA and Great Britain. Telegram channels, in particular, wrote about this “Mriya"(313,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Militarist"(234,000), "Crimean Z laundress 🧺🧼"(129,000), "Ostashko! Important"(110,000), "Sheikh Tamir" (105,000) and "Scott Ritter on Telegram"(103,000).
On October 7, 2023, militants from the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, attacked cities and towns in southern Israel. After this, Israel began bombing strategic Hamas targets, while cutting off the supply of fuel, water and electricity to the Palestinian enclave.
Posts on social networks depicting a supposedly recent issue of The Independent appeared on the eve of the vote in the UN Security Council on draft resolutionproposed by a group of Arab countries led by Jordan. The document called for an immediate ceasefire and protection of the civilian population of Gaza. At the same time, Canada's amendment, which proposed to introduce a clause condemning Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, was rejected. As a result, for the resolution voted 120 countries, 14 were against, another 45 abstained.
Thus, the picture supposedly from the latest issue of The Independent is, at the very least, untrue. Not three, but 14 countries opposed the ceasefire resolution, with the UK abstaining from voting.
If you look closely at the viral picture, the answer is in the upper right corner. Despite the low quality of the image, you can see the date - Friday, July 21, 2006.
The Independent's editorial that day is valid was dedicated war in the Middle East, but different: the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. July 12, 2006, militants of the Shiite group Hezbollah subjected rocket and mortar attacks on northern Israel, entered the country from Lebanon and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers (it later turned out that they were wounded during the attack and subsequently died in captivity). Israel in response began a massive bombardment Lebanon. Full-scale fighting continued for a month, and the UN tried several times to achieve a ceasefire.
Article, published in the 21 July 2006 issue of The Independent, condemned British foreign policy, accusing Prime Minister Tony Blair of blindly following American interests. The illustration on the front page did not reflect the vote on any specific resolution, but condemnation or support for Israel's military actions in general.
In addition, back in March 2016, the release of the print version of The Independent was discontinued, and from now on the British newspaper is published only in electronic form. The layout of the issues is as close as possible to the printed version, but now the publication has a different design, radically different from the viral image.
Thus, an old issue of The Independent dedicated to the 2006 Lebanese-Israeli war is being passed off as the latest issue of a British newspaper in October 2023.
Cover photo: social networks
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