The video is made before the latest wave of war-crimes and violence in the Middle East. The disputed video is not related to the current situation between Hamas and Israel and does not show victims of the war in the Middle East. The video was posted on TikTok few days before Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on 7th October this year, as can be seen from the photos published by the Jewish-language fact-checking newsroom, Fake Reporter. They confirmed that the disputed video with caged children had nothing to do with the conflict between Hamas and Israel, as did other newsrooms such as Snopes, Lead Stories, USA Today, Myth Detector and Faktograf, writes Thuthmeter.
Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
We are fact checking a post on the social network Facebook sharing a video with a text:
You foolish people from Macedonia publicly supporting Hamas, look at this video of Hamas-fighters posted on TikTok this morning.
Kidnapped Israeli children, locked up in a cage… they are harassed and mocked at. They are preparing to exchange them for murderers convicted by Israel.
Note: Dimitar Apasiev, a Member of the Macedonian Parliament, supported these Hamas-activities in the past two days.
The disturbing video shows caged children. However, it is not true that the video is depicting Israeli children captured by Hamas. As fact-checkers from various newsrooms around the world stated, the same video has been abused to falsely portray Israeli or Palestinian children, depending on who is publishing.
But, the truth is completely different.
The video was made before the latest wave of war-crimes and violence in the Middle East. The contents was used to spread disinformation. The disputed video is not related to the current Hamas-Israel situation and does not present victims of the war in the Middle East. The video was posted on TikTok a few days before the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on 7th October this year, as can be seen from the photographs published by the Jewish-language fact-checking newsroom, Fake Reporter.
According to Fake Reporter‘s post, the original video placed on TikTok was posted days before the attack of Hamas and it is not known where it was recorded or by whom. The only thing that is known, and what was documented by journalists, is that the video was posted before the attack.
Bear in mind that currently a video of caged children is circulating claiming that the children are kidnapped Israeli children. This is an old video – published at least 4 days before the attack – as you can see from the photograph. There is no shortage of horror on the Internet, and child abuse is not acceptable at any time, but in this case, it is a lie. Stop sharing the video, Fake Reporter posted on 8th October on the social network X.
TikTok deleted the disputed video, and the user who posted it, had temporarily deactivated the account. However, on 8th October, the TikTok account was reactivated and a video in Arabic was posted explaining that the caged children were his relatives and that the video was before the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Hello, this message is for the people who have been asking about the video. Those children are my relatives, they are not Jews. I recorded the video 3 days before the attack, says the person in the video who is the author of the video.
The original video was posted on TikTok with a popular hashtag and a funny audio track of a man laughing in the background, suggesting that it was posted as part of a TikTok trend unrelated to the kidnappings in the Middle East. That the disputed video with the caged children has nothing to do with the conflict between Hamas and Israel, was also confirmed by other newsrooms such as Snopes, Lead Stories, USA Today, Myth Detector and Faktograf.
Due to all the above-noted facts, we assess the post fact-checked untrue.
