In the context of the ongoing women-led protests in Iran, a post is being shared on social media where an unarmed girl can be seen beaten by uniformed and armed men. The post claims that the girl in the video is a Palestinian assaulted by Israeli forces. The post claims that these visuals were never reported by Western mainstream media. Let’s fact-check the claim made in this post through this article.
Claim: Visuals of Israeli forces assaulting an unarmed girl and such videos are never reported in the western media.
Fact: The video shared in the post is from February 2022. Reportedly, this was captured in Jerusalem when Palestinians gathered at the Damascus gate to celebrate al-Israa wa al-Miraj, the anniversary of Prophet Mohammed’s journey to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Police reportedly fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse these crowds who were allegedly throwing stones. The video in the viral post is from this incident that was widely reported. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
A primary keyword search on the internet about the incident led us to a video report by Al-Jazeera English. This video report contains a clip from the viral video. We noticed the source of the clip as Baraah Abo Ramouz and further refined our keyword search on the internet. This led us to news reports (here, here and here) and few social media posts (here and here) from February and March 2022 which contained the same video. This video was also found on Baraah Abo Ramouz’s Facebook page.
Reportedly, this video was captured during alleged clashes between Israeli police officers and Palestinians at Jerusalems’s Damascus gate. On 28 February this year, several Palestinians gathered (here) at Jerusalem’s Damascus gate to celebrate al-Israa wa al-Miraj, the anniversary of Prophet Mohammed’s journey to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Reportedly, the police dispersed the group of people with stun grenades and water cannons, who were allegedly pelting stones and bottles at the police. A 11-year old girl was also reportedly injured and was later hospitalised after getting hit by a stun grenade fired by the police (here and here).
The girl who was beaten by the Israeli police forces is a 15-year-old Palestinian, Iman Kiswani, who was arrested by the Israeli troops that day (here). Her interview after her release from arrest/ detention can be seen here.
Contrary to the post’s claim, these visuals and the incident are clearly not of a recent incident. The viral post also claims that this incident was not reported by the mainstream media, while we found that the incident was covered by the media including the Associated Press, which you can read here.
To sum up, video of Israeli forces attacking a Palestinian girl in February 2022 is shared as visuals of a recent incident.
