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 essential today than ever before.
Claim
Egypt has decided to join the war against Israel and Egyptian leaders vow revenge.
Fact
Egypt has not declared war against Israel. The viral video is created digitally.
As Israeli ground forces carry out what media reports describe as a relatively large incursion into the Gaza Strip overnight to attack Hamas, a video claiming that Egypt has joined the war against Israel with the country’s leader vowing revenge is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @desmondfreeman41 posted an eight-minute-and-forty-four-second video showing several footage of military drills and peace talks. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Egypt joins the war against Israel. Egyptian leaders vow revenge. The Middle East is on the brink of a new war.” Audio accompanying the video presented in a news reporting style says, “Egypt has violated its neutrality and the Israeli Army is challenging the entire Middle East. The Israeli Air Force continues to violate the Egyptian border despite all warnings. The Israeli Army’s air strike on the Egyptian borders and the violation of the border by Israeli unmanned combat aircraft in Egypt angered Egyptian President Sisi. The Egyptian Army and tanks are being sent to the border areas. The Egyptian government, which signed the first peace agreement in 1979 is one of the countries that have made the most efforts to sign a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. Hamas forces carried out air strikes on the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. With this attack, Hamas has shown the world that it doesn’t want peace. Immediately after this attack, Israeli Defence forces stated in a statement that this attack would have a great reward and carried out a new operation in Gaza. However, the Egyptian government reacted harshly to this operation which was carried out by Israel in order to respond. Claiming that Israel has committed war crimes, the Egyptian authorities demanded that these attacks be stopped as soon as possible. However, the first response to Egypt came from the United States. Nine Egyptian soldiers were injured when the Israeli Army accidentally bombed a tower, where Egyptian border guards were stationed, while continuing air strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah forces…”
The video posted on October 25 has garnered 3204 likes, 473 users have shared it and 332 people have commented until the time of publishing this article.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker closely analysed the video and split it into several key frames and conducted reverse searches on them. However, the results didn’t yield any relevant results.
So we searched YouTube by taking a clue from the voiceover accompanying the video. The search led us to a video, dated October 23 2023, posted on a YouTube channel named DCM Global. The video titled ‘Brave Move from Egypt: Muslim Countries United forces in GAZA! Israel is on the Brink of a New War!’ exactly matched the viral video. However, the content of the video does not reflect what is currently happening in the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East. We checked the other videos posted on the channel and found them to be sensational and unverified.
We then looked up the latest news on Egypt’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict and found a news report, dated October 25 2023, published by Reuters. According to the news article, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday that his country was playing a “very positive role” trying to de-escalate and find a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
We also found a news article regarding a meeting between Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II to discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict published on VoA Africa online. The article, dated October 19 2023, noted that the two leaders “affirmed their unified position rejecting the policy of collective punishment in the siege, starvation or displacement” of Palestinians.
Further, we found an article, dated October 22 2023, carried by Associated Press regarding Egypt opening its border to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
However, our research didn’t find any reports published on established media outlets saying that Egypt’s President Sisi is angry at the violation of its borders by Israeli forces and Egypt has decided to join the conflict as claimed by the viral video.
On checking an article published on Anadolu Ajansi, we found that Egyptian President Sisi reiterated his opposition to the Israeli ground operation in the Gaza strip.
Thus, our findings clearly indicate that Egypt has neither made any decision to join the war against Israel and nor vowed revenge.
Conclusion
No, Israel’s neighbour Egypt has not decided to join the war against Israel. The viral claim is misleading.
Result: False
Sources
DCM Global/YouTube, Oct 23, 2023
Reuters, Oct 25, 2023
Associated Press, Oct 22, 2023
Anadolu Ajansi, Oct 26, 2023
VoA Africa online, Oct 19, 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 essential today than ever before.
