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| - Fact Check: Video of Palestinian girl crying as her home is demolished is over three years old
India Today Fact Check found that the video is from Jerusalem and dates back to August 2020.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is not from the ongoing conflict. It is from August 2020, when four Palestinian families were forced to destroy their own homes by decree of the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem.
A video that’s been widely shared online purports to show a young Palestinian girl crying because the Israeli army was demolishing her home.
Sharing the video on X user wrote, "A Palestinian girl cries as Israel demolishes her home in Jerusalem, leaving her and her family homeless. Someone tell me what Israel is ‘defending itself’?” The archive of such a post can be seen here.
India Today Fact Check found that the video is more than three years old and unrelated to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Our Probe
A reverse search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to the same clip uploaded to several Facebook pages in August 2020 with similar claims.
While these posts didn’t provide any additional details, it is clear that the video had nothing to do with the ongoing conflict that began after a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
An advanced search with relevant keywords led us to the same video uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Turkish public broadcaster TRT Arabic on August 11, 2020. The description of the video stated that a Palestinian cried as she watched her family’s home, South of occupied Jerusalem, being destroyed by Israeli occupation forces under the pretext of not having a permit.
On the same day, another version of this video was uploaded to YouTube that stated the house belonged to Ibrahim Saiba.
Further searches led to a report from the Middle East Eye published on August 17, 2020, which stated that the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem had issued new demolition orders against four Palestinian families. Subsequently, families were forced to raze their own homes to avoid costly fines.
Thus, it’s clear that the viral video is old and unrelated to the ongoing conflict.
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