2004 Image of Israeli soldiers falsely relates to recent Middle East tensions. Discover the facts.
The Israel-Hamas conflict started on Oct 7, 2023, has escalated in the past couple of months involving numerous Middle Eastern nations leading to massive causalities and substantial damage. Not only this, but the digital landscape has also been heavily affected by these tensions. Amid this, an image is making rounds on social media platform X(formerly Twitter) along with the image of the deceased Hezbollah supremo showing some military personnel in a tired and weary position. Users are sharing this image with captions like Israeli soldiers are in tears as predicted by Nasrallah before his martyrdom.
An account with the username Legitimate Targets posted this image and wrote: “BREAKING: ISRAELI soldiers are reportedly “crying, a lot,” as predicted by Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah before his martyrdom”
The account is owned and operated by famous peddler of misinformation Jackson Hinkle on X.
In additon, other accounts also shared these images and made similar captions. The preview link is given here, here, and here.
Fact-check
The DFRAC team fact-checked the above viral image. Using Google Lens, we conducted a reverse image search of the viral image and found it on Alamy with the date ‘April 3, 2004’. The contributor to the image is the well-known media outlet Associated Press.
As per the image’s description, Israeli army soldiers wait as army specialists inspect a tunnel found in a house during an army operation at the Rafah refugee camp, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Rafah, next to the Egyptian border in the southern Gaza Strip early Saturday, April 3, 2004. The Israeli army periodically finds and destroys tunnels used, according to the army, by Palestinian militants to smuggle weapons and explosives from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.
Conclusion
DFRAC’s fact-check proves that the viral image dates back to 2004 showing Israeli military personnel waiting as army specialists inspect a tunnel found in a house during an operation at Rafah refugee camp, not a recent one.
Analysis: Misleading
