Video from 2020 isn’t evidence that recent violence in Israel and Gaza is ‘fake’

A video recirculating on social media suggests that recent violence in Israel and Gaza is staged. 

The footage shows about 10 people surrounding and carrying what looks like a stretcher. When an air siren sounds, the people scatter, dropping the stretcher and leaving it in the street. As the camera zooms in, the person who’d been on the stretcher, covered in a wrap and presumably a corpse, throws off the cover, stands and  runs off. Someone off camera laughs. 

"How radical Israeli build narrative," an Oct. 11 X post sharing the video said. "A dead boy suddenly comes alive hearing an air raid siren. #Gaza_under_attack #Hamas #Israel." 

"Everything seems to be fake," reads the text over a version of the video shared on Instagram Oct. 11. 

This Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

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A reverse-image search of several stills from the video revealed it predates the current violence in the Middle East. 

It’s been online since at least March 2020, and several posts connect it to COVID-19. 

One September 2021 Facebook post also suggests the clip was filmed in Jordan. BBC News reviewed 2020 reports that said "it showed a group of boys in Jordan trying to avoid strict COVID-19 restrictions by pretending to hold a funeral." (The BBC fact-checked another claim in 2021 that the video showed a fake funeral in Gaza.) 

We rate claims the video is related to the current violence in Israel and Gaza False.