Fact Check: Old video from Mexico falsely linked to ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict

Hyderabad: A horrifying video of a man being brutally murdered is being shared on social media in the context of the ongoing Israel-Hamas unrest.

“Warning Horrific documentation not recommended. Hamas filmed themselves, cutting a pregnant woman’s fetus, beating her and stabbing her while her mouth was taped so she couldn’t scream. The world denies the brutality, claims it is a “war of freedom,” but we will continue to show the world. There was a real holocaust here. (sic)” said a caption of a post containing the video.

Click here and here to view the posts. The video contains extremely graphic imagery. Viewer discretion is advised.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false as the video is neither recent nor from Israel or Gaza.

We started our investigation by performing a reverse image search using the keyframes from the video and found a report carrying the stills from the viral video.

A report on a Mexican news media outlet Blog Del Narco was titled ‘Horrifying video where Mayo Zambada hitmen removed the heart of one subject and decapitated another,’ dated July 26, 2018.

The report said, “The video broadcast on the web shows the moment in which the young man’s heart is tortured and taken out while another mutilated man lies lying down. They report that both belong to the criminal group “Guardia Guerrerense”. Between three and four heavily armed civilians, they murder in atrocious manner to two men – who are accused of belonging to the Guardia Guerrerense criminal group.”

We also found the clip in the viral video at the time stamp of 2:41 seconds.

Another reverse image search took us to a video on YouTube i24News English titled ‘Israeli rescue service commander recounts Hamas atrocities,’ dated October 13, 2023.

On closely analysing the YouTube video, we found that the report features Yossi Landau, an Israeli rescue operations member called Zaka giving an interview about the aftermath of an incident in Ashdod.

Here, he is describing a scene that is not related to the viral video at all. With this, it is evident that the viral video is not only old but also altered to make it look like it belongs to the Israeli-Hamas conflict.