Fact Check: Video of man teaching daughter how to laugh at bombing is not from Palestine

While sharing the video, a Facebook user captioned, “A father tells his daughter to laugh every time she hears an Isr+aeli airstrike so that she doesn’t get scared. May Allah ease their pain. (sic)”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is from Syria in 2020.

Upon a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we found the video on Instagram, posted on February 18, 2020. The Turkish caption stated that a Syrian father is protecting her daughter not only physically but also physiologically.

Taking this cue, we ran a keyword search and came across a video report on YouTube, published by the verified channel of Arab News on February 20, 2020, titled “Syrian father and three-year-old daughter laugh off the shelling.”

According to the channel, the video is from war-torn Idlib, where a father, Abdullah al-Mohammed, found a unique way of calming his daughter by turning the shelling into a game. In the game between father and daughter, the three-year-old laughs off every time there is a sound of explosion.

We also found the video published by The Guardian on February 18, 2020, titled “Syrian father teaches daughter to cope with bombs through laughter.”

“In a video posted on social media, Abdullah Mohammad and his daughter Salwa, three, can be heard laughing at the sound of shelling in Syria. Mohammad, who moved his family from Idlib to the Sarmada district, has tried to insulate his daughter from trauma by telling her the noise of bombs is part of a game. In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are prohibited, but since then more than 1,800 civilians have been killed in attacks by the Assad regime and Russian forces.” reads the video’s description.

Hence, we conclude that the viral video is not from Palestine and is being falsely linked to the Israeli-Hamas war.