Old protest Telegraph video clip and recent ABC News report video are stitched and shared with misleading claims
Claim
BREAKING: Live from #Israel now 500.000 Israelis are protesting against #Netanyahu who are power-hungry &warlord tyrant! Even Israelis in Tel Aviv are now screaming Bibi is a murderer
Rating
Explanation
In the viral 53-second video we see a massive crowd of people walking down the roads of Israel in an aerial view surrounded by tall buildings around. At the beginning of the video, we see that they have added a piece of information on the screen which shows around 500,000 people are participating in the demonstration.
From there we see a host who explains that people are shouting and chanting “Bibi is the murderer and he says people are blaming PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, for getting into this mess. Thinking about his own political situation for the past number of years and not about protecting the citizens of the south of this country, not about increasing the security and not dealing with Hamas in any other way and just allowing them to exist and then bombing them every once in a while, that there has been no strategic plan. It’s been keeping a status quo that is untenable, that’s what the people have been complaining about.” The above video has been posted by another user with a similar claim can be viewed here. Come, Let’s check the authenticity of this claim.
What’s the truth?
When we started our research using the viral video, initially we noticed that the video had two separate logos. One is during the start of the video and we identified it as the ‘TheTelegraph’ icon and the other one while the host appears and it’s the icon of ‘ABC News.’ This means two videos have been joined and stitched together which is making rounds and more confusion on the internet.
First Video:
The viral clip is a total of 53 seconds, and initially, it shows a massive crowd of lakhs of people taking down the street and here at the top right we were able to see the “The Telegraph” logo on the corner.
So, we took that as a cue and searched with relevant keywords. Finally we found the same image in an article published by ‘The Telegraph’ on 12 March 2023 titled as “Israel’s ‘biggest ever’ protests as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government persists with reforms.”
The above article says there was a protest by the Israeli people against the PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government but this was not a recent event. This proves that the video is old from March of this year and has no connection to the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Hamas.
Also, when we searched further in the The Telegraph YouTube channel we were able to see the same viral video clip uploaded on the same date. The video was a longer version which has 1 minute and 18 seconds and the description says that the protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against a contentious plan to overhaul the judiciary as the Israeli government pressed ahead with the plan. The nationwide demonstrations have been a regular weekly event for more than two months.
Second Video:
When we analyzed the viral video we saw the second logo of “ABC News” when a host appears on the screen and started explaining the situtation on the ground by why the people are angry on the Israel PM. We took that as a hint here and searched using the keyframes of the viral video and found out the original video uploaded by the ‘ABC News’ on its YouTube page on 14 October 2023.
This is a longer version of the video clip having 10 minutes and captioned as “On the ground in Tel Aviv with protestors.” While we listened the whole video the viral part comes around the timemark 4 minutes and 40 seconds where we heard the host making the same claims as in the circulating video.
This proves that this recent video has been added to the previous old protest video and made into a new one and circulated in this current war tension scenario creating more panic and confusion.
Also, this proves that both videos are real but taken from two different timelines and stitched together and are widely spread on social media.
Conclusion:
Therefore, we conclude with the available evidence that the circulating video is formed from two separate timelines and shared on social media with misleading claims.
In reality, the first portion showing the crowd is from this year early March and the second video showing a TV anchor addressing a camera is a recent one.
