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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke October 31, 2023

Old footage of Palestinians’ deaths shared amid current violence

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  • This video is from 2014.

An old video is being shared amid the current Israel-Hamas war, but it predates the latest conflict. 

"Palestinian journalist films the moment an Israeli strike kills him and a fellow medic on live TV," reads text above the video. It shows two people cowering amid rubble and dust before an explosion. Then, the camera falls. A motionless hand stays in its frame. 

"Both Fouad Jaber and Khaled Hamad were killed by this missile," text appearing on the screen says. "Khaled’s camera continued to record after he died." 

An Oct. 25 X post sharing the video said: "In two weeks we have witnessed heartbreak after heartbreak, and this footage adds to another horror, killed in the line of duty." 

An Oct. 30 Instagram post sharing the video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

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The footage in the video comes from Al Jazeera, which shared it in a segment on Gaza that was posted to YouTube on July 20, 2016. 

This particular clip was filmed July 20, 2014, according to text in the Al Jazeera video. It starts around the 32:45 mark. 

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"On July 8, 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, aimed at stopping alleged rocket fire from Gaza into occupied territories," the YouTube caption says, going on to refer to a neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. "In this film, cameraman Khaled Hamad joins local paramedics in Shujayea as they attend to the dead and wounded at the height of the raid. Risking his life, he documents atrocities committed against civilians in the neighborhood during Operation Protective Edge." 

The Guardian covered Hamad’s death, reporting July 20, 2014, that Hamad was killed in Gaza that day, "reportedly during Israeli artillery shelling of the city’s Shujaya residential district." 

We rate claims that this footage is from October 2023 and the violence that has occurred since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 False.

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Old footage of Palestinians’ deaths shared amid current violence

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