Amid the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, which started on 07 October 2023, several videos are being widely shared as visuals of people and soldiers allegedly being tortured and killed by Hamas militants. Let’s examine the claims made in each case.
Video 1:
A video is being shared on social media claiming it shows visuals of Hamas militants beheading an innocent Israeli boy. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent video of Hamas militants beheading an Israeli boy.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows a 2016 video of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki militants brutally beheading a Palestinian child in Handarat, north of Aleppo, Syria. The video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On the reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, screengrabs of the video were found in an article published by ‘Ohtuleht’ news site in July 2016. The news site reported it is the visuals of militants of Nour al-Din al-Zenki, a moderate Syrian rebel group, beheading a Palestine boy in Handarat, north of Aleppo, Syria.
Several news organizations published articles reporting about the beheading of a Palestinian boy in Syria’s Aleppo. They can be seen here, here, and here. As per the reports, fighters from the Syrian insurgent group Nour al-Din al-Zinki decapitated a 12-year-old Palestinian boy claiming that the boy was a fighter belonging to the pro-government Liwa al-Quds militia.
However, the Syrian government condemned the allegations made by the Nour al-Din al-Zinki militant group and confirmed that the was a Palestinian boy from the Palestinian refugee camp of Handarat on the edge of Aleppo. The video was taken during the 2016 Syrian war. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.
To sum it up, an unrelated old video from Syria is shared as the visuals of Hamas militants beheading an Israeli boy.
Video 2:
Another disturbing video, which vaguely depicts an individual killing another person, is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that it showcases Hamas terrorists consuming the heart of a living Israeli citizen. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Upon conducting an internet search using relevant keywords, we were led to various newspaper reports (here, here and here) from 2020 that featured the same visuals. According to these reports, the video actually depicts an alleged member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel extracting and eating the heart of a drug trafficker from the Tepalcatepec cartel. This incident reportedly took place in a rural area of the state of Michoacan, Mexico.
Therefore, the viral video is not related to the conflict between Israel and Palestine that occurred in October 2023.
