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| - Fact Check: Video of Israeli soldier playing with Palestinian kid is NOT from ongoing war
India Today found that the viral video does not pertain to the ongoing Hamas-Israel conflict.
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India Today Fact Check
India Today found that the viral video is not recent, dating back at least a year.
Amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, a video of a soldier playing football with a child went viral on social media. Many claimed that this video showed an Israeli soldier playing with a Palestinian child.
An X user who shared the viral video wrote, "It's Difficult to Watch this Israeli Soldier and Palestinian Kid Play Football Knowing We're At War. How did we get to where we are today?" An archived version of this post can be seen here.
India Today found that the viral video is not recent; it is at least a year old.
Our Probe
While performing a reverse search of the keyframes from the viral video, we found it on the YouTube account of Hananya Naftali, a controversial Israeli influencer and aide to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He uploaded the video on YouTube on October 16, 2022, with a caption indicating that it showed an Israeli soldier playing soccer with a Palestinian child in Hebron, a Palestinian city in the West Bank.
It's noteworthy that Naftali on several occasions had shared content on social media related to Israeli soldiers playing and having fun with Palestinian children. Even amid the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza, he shared a similar video on his Instagram account.
We found the viral video on Naftali's X account as well, which was reshared by several social media users earlier this year.
While we couldn't pinpoint the original source, precise timing, or location of the video, it is more than evident that the video predates the current conflict between Hamas and Israel.
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