Vian Dakhil's Interview is being misrepresented as an account of Israeli Woman released by Hamas - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
October 26, 2023
A video is making rounds on social media platforms where a woman allegedly speaks about her distressing experiences. The accompanying claim suggests that the woman in the video is an Israeli released from Hamas captivity, sharing her harrowing ordeal. In this article, we are going to fact-check this claim.
Claim: The video shows an Israeli woman, recently freed from Hamas captivity, recounting her experiences.
Fact: Contrary to the claim, the woman seen in the video is Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi Iraqi Member of Parliament, recounting the gruesome atrocities committed by the Islamic State terrorists in an interview she gave in 2017. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To learn more about the viral video, a reverse image search was conducted on some keyframes of the video. This procedure led to news articles (here, here, and here) dating back to 2017 that identified the woman in the video as Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi Iraqi MP.
News portals like the Independent reported her disturbing claims made in an interview with the Egyptian news channel Extra News. These accounts described how the Islamic State terrorists in Iraq fed a baby to her mother and violated a ten-year-old girl, leading to her death in front of her family.
On further search, we found that Hamas released two women they held captive on humanitarian reasons and poor health grounds. You can watch the interview of one of the persons here.
To sum up, the viral video shows Vian Dakhil’s Interview,  the Yazidi Iraqi Member of Parliament, recounting the gruesome atrocities committed by the Islamic State terrorists, not the account of an Israeli Woman released by Hamas.