Fact Check: BTS footage from Lebanese film peddled as Palestinians faking injuries

The subsequent frames of the video also show another girl child playing with a balloon and a man playing a violin at the same location.

Ofir Gendelman, the Israeli Prime Minister’s spokesperson to the Arab world, shared the video and wrote, “The Palestinians are fooling the international media and public opinion. DON'T FALL FOR IT.See for yourselves how they fake injuries and evacuating “injured” civilians, all in front of the cameras. Pallywood gets busted again. (sic)”

Indian film director Vivek Agnihotri reposted Gendelman’s post with the caption, “Facts Are Not Facts”.

Another X premium user shared the video with the caption, “Never forget this: everything you know about Gaza is through Hamas. Look at this beautiful Pallywood production.” (Translated from Spanish)

Several X premium handles shared the video, amplifying the claim. Click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here to view the posts.

Note: Pallywood, a portmanteau of ‘Palestine’ and ‘Hollywood’, is a derogatory label used by pro-Israeli to deny incidents involving actual civilian harm. Many believe that Palestinians in the war against Israel do media manipulation, distortion or fraud to sway international public opinion in their favour. The term was first coined by Richard Landes in a 2005 documentary titled “Pallywood: According to Palestinian Sources…”

Fact Check

NewsMeter verified that the video shows behind-the-scenes footage of a Lebanese film.

We skimmed through the comments on Gendelman’s post and found a premium handle called Arabs Event claiming that the video is a clip from a song. They also shared a link in the comments which led us to an Instagram reel which has the finished version of the viral video. The reel was posted by an Instagram account Mahmoud Ramzi.

The video, titled ‘The Reality’, shared by Mahmoud Ramzi starts with a group of people protesting with Palestinian flags and then shows others in the vicinity such as a family celebrating with their child and women taking videos, and ends with a girl covered in blood being attended to on a stretcher and a man playing the violin. A voiceover in the video connects all these people thematically describing the situation in Palestine.

In Mahmoud Ramzi's video, the girl on the stretcher and an actor wearing a green t-shirt at the front of the crowd waving Palestinian flags also feature in the viral video shared by Gendelman and others. They are also found together posing for the camera at the end of the video.

This made us think that the viral video might have been behind-the-scenes footage of the final video shared by Mahmoud Ramzi, made for the purpose of describing the situation in Palestine.

To learn more about the video, we performed a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe and found it posted by Omar Atabb on Instagram on October 29. Omar Atabb describes himself in his Instagram bio as a Lebanon-based actor. Atabb posted the video using the hashtags “#Palestine #Palestine #Al-Aqsa_Flood #Gaza #Al-Maamdani_Hospital #May_God_Have_Merci_the_Martyrs”. Also, in her version of the video, the video ends with an overlaying text which says ‘Filmed by Mahmoud Ramzi.’

The post by Omar Atabb and also how the video has incongruent shots, such as a man playing a violin in front of a girl on a stretcher covered in blood, proved that the viral video shows BTS footage of an artistic simulation of the conditions in Palestine and is not meant to present a false account of the ground reality in Palestine.

For further confirmation, we also tried to find more accounts sharing the video.

We found an Instagram user called Rami Jardali who shared the viral video. Rami Jardali, who describes himself as an actor, tagged Omar Atabb and Mahmoud Ramzi in the viral video. He mentioned in the caption that the video shows BTS footage. Rami Jardali also shared the final video in another post.

Finally, we came across another account called the main use run by a person called Amira Mehailia who posted the combined version of the viral video and the final product. The video was overlayed with text giving points debunking the claim that the video is Pallywood propaganda.

Similar to the issues we mentioned earlier, the person asked the viewers to consider why would a video trying to falsify a war, would include confetti, balloons and violins in the video. The user states that the video is only an artistic interpretation of the situation in Palestine.

Hence, the viral video shows behind-the-scenes footage of an artistic depiction of people suffering of people in Gaza. We conclude that the video shows Palestinians faking injuries is false.