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| - Fact Check: Stuffed toys thrown at soccer match was for Turkey quake, NOT Palestine
India Today Fact Check found that the video dates back to February and does not have anything to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict at all.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is from February 2023, and was a part of a fundraiser for the victims of the Turkey and Syria earthquakes.
A video of fans showering stuffed toys during a football match has surfaced on social media, with many claiming that this was done in support of Palestine amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
This clip showed fans at a stadium throwing stuffed toys on the ground and footballers in white and red jerseys applauding it. It was shared with claims like, "The Football Ground became a battlefield for the Palestinians. Thank you all for taking a stand in favour of Palestine." The archived version of a similar post can be seen here.
Our Probe
Upon reverse-searching keyframes from the viral video, we came across a screengrab of this video featured in an article published by an Indonesian outlet on February 28, 2023.
Per the report, a Turkish toy store orchestrated an event, declaring prior to the match that all proceeds from the sale of plush toys within the stadium would be allocated to aid the victims of the devastating earthquakes that rocked Turkey in February. Furthermore, it noted that the Besiktas Football Club was among the participating teams in this match.
Subsequent keyword searches led us to an ESPN India report from February 28 that mentioned that the Besiktas fans threw thousands of stuffed toys onto the ground during the match against Antalyaspor, which ended zero-zero.
The official YouTube channel of Guardian Football also uploaded a video on February 23 that depicted this act by the fans minutes after the game began. This video can be seen below.
We also searched with relevant keywords to confirm if a similar incident had taken place during any recent football match to support Palestine or Israel but found none.
Therefore, it is clear that an old and unrelated video from Turkey was falsely portrayed as a statement in favour of Palestine.
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