In light of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, a widely circulated video alleges Palestinians are faking injuries to garner sympathy. Additionally, another video depicts a group of young men seemingly orchestrating a funeral procession with similar implications. Through this article let’s fact-check the authenticity of these videos.
Claim: Visuals showing Palestinians faking injuries and orchestrating a funeral procession amid the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
Fact: These visuals are unrelated to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. While one of the videos shows Palestinian makeup artist creating injuries on actors as part of film project, another video, which dates back to 2020, shows few young Jordanian men attempting to circumvent the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in their country by pretending to hold a funeral. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The visuals in this video are set in Palestine. However, they do not depict Palestinians faking injuries for the purpose of eliciting sympathy, as suggested in the post. Instead, the footage showcases Mariam Salah, a Palestinian makeup artist, applying makeup as part of a film production.
Performing a reverse image search on the screenshots from the viral video led us to a news report carrying identical visuals. The news story published in March 2017 highlights the journey of a Palestinian female makeup artist in a predominantly male-dominated industry. According to the report, the visuals capture Mariam Salah skillfully creating unsettling injuries on actors involved in a project undertaken by the French charity called ‘Doctors of the World’.
Hence, these reports establish that the viral visuals are not related to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
The footage depicting young men staging a funeral dates back to 2020. In reality, it portrays a small group of young Jordanian men attempting to circumvent the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in their country by pretending to hold a funeral.
A reverse image search of the screenshots of the viral video yielded multiple news reports that reported the same visuals (here, here & here). These reports described the procession as a “fake funeral” by a few young Jordanian men who were trying to evade the country’s COVID-19 lockdown rules.
Thus, these reports establish that the visuals have nothing to do with the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
To sum it up, unrelated visuals are being shared attributing them to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
