Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined the battle against Palestinians.
Fact
PM Netanyahu visited the Israeli soldiers at Gaza border to boost their morale.
As Israel continues to bombard various areas in the Gaza Strip in response to the deadly attack launched on October 7 by Hamas militants, many false and unverified videos are being shared online claiming them to be from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. In this context, a video claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined the Israeli army to fight Palestinian is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @prasanto37 posted a 39-second video showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting Israeli soldiers. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Israel’s Prime Minister heading to the Gaza region to fight against Palestinians. See the love for his country, our leaders sell the country. Israel PM Benjamin joins the war.” A Nepali patriotic song is played in the background.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on October 15 has garnered 24.1k likes, 373 users have shared it and 461 users have commented until the time of publishing this article.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker conducted a search on google by using relevant keywords and found several videos whose frames resembled the viral video.
On checking a video, dated 14 October 2023, published on the YouTube channel of ANI News, we found that the video frames exactly matched the viral video. The video descriptions read, “Israeli PM Netanyahu visited the frontline at Gaza border and interacted with soldiers on the frontline and gave them a morale boost.”
Further, we checked another video published on the YouTube channel of NBC News and found the footage exactly matching the viral video. The video confirms that PM Netanyahu visited the soldiers near the Gaza border to boost their morale and not to fight himself as claimed in the viral video.
We also found the same video published on the Washington Post online. The caption of the video dated October 14 read that Netanyahu met with soldiers stationed in southern Israel ahead of an expected ground offensive against Hamas.
Thus, our findings clearly indicate that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu didn’t go to fight with Palestinian militant group Hamas but to boost the morale of the soldiers.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming to show Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu joining the soldiers in the frontline to fight against the Palestinians is misleading. He actually went to visit the frontline soldiers fighting against Hamas.
Result: Missing Context
Sources
ANI News, 14 October, 2023
NBC, 15 October 2023
Washington Post, 15 October 2023
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
