CLAIM: Videos taken one day apart show a Palestinian “crisis actor” pretending to be seriously injured in a hospital bed one day and completely fine the next.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Two different people appear in the videos. In addition, the video of an injured man in a hospital bed dates to August.
THE FACTS: As tensions rise with the Israeli military’s announcement that its ground forces will expand their activities, videos are being shared to falsely claim an injured man is an actor playing a Palestinian victim.
A post on X, formerly known as Twitter, puts two videos side by side. In one, a man lies seriously injured in a hospital bed with two other men at his side. In the other, a man is talking into a camera while walking through wreckage after an attack in Gaza. The post claims the videos show the same man, with the hospital taken a day earlier.
“Palestinian blogger ‘miraculously’ healed in one day from ‘Israeli bombing’. Yesterday, he was ‘hospitalized,’ today, he is walking and walking like nothing happened,” reads the post on X, with more than 9,000 likes.
Another post just shares the hospital video on its own but makes the same claim. “Hamas Crisis Actor pretends to be a victim of an Israeli air strike- appearing in a hospital bed while pretending to be in a critical condition as two supporting actors hold his hand,” reads one post sharing the video on X. It had more than 33,000 likes.
But the videos show two different people and the hospital video predates the latest Israel-Hamas war.
The video of the man speaking to the camera is Saleh Aljafarawi, from Gaza. Aljafarawi posted the original video on Wednesday to his Instagram account. “More than 30 missiles landed in front of my eyes,” he wrote in the caption with the video. Aljafarawi didn’t respond to the AP’s request for comment. Aljafarawi also has a YouTube channel where he describes himself a Palestinian living in Gaza.
The video of the young man in the hospital bed had been online at least August with the earliest version posted on Aug. 18, 2023, on TikTok. Another video from a different angle was shared a day earlier on TikTok.
One of the hashtags from the Aug. 18 video reads, “#Nour_Shams_Camp_”, which is a refugee camp located in the West Bank. An Aug. 25 report from the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led group, shows a photo of the same man in the hospital video. The report identifies him as 16-year-old Mohammed Zendiq, whose leg was amputated at the hospital after he was injured during July 24 clashes at the camp. Other outlets reported on the events at the time.
This isn’t the first time video footage has been misrepresented to spread misinformation and make false accusations of “crisis actors” during the Israel-Hamas war.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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