No, This Video Does Not Show Hamas Militants Using Parachutes To Enter Israel

The video has been on the internet since September 2023 and is from Cairo, Egypt.

Aishwarya Varma
WebQoof
Published:
<div class="paragraphs"><p>The video was shot in Cairo, Egypt and has no connection to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.</p></div>
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The video was shot in Cairo, Egypt and has no connection to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

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A video showing several people using parachutes to land on a fairly crowded football field has gone viral on social media.

What are users claiming?: The video is being shared in the background of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, claiming that it shows Hamas militants using parachutes to enter Israel.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of more claims can be seen here, here and here.)

What is the truth?: The video predates the conflict, which started with Hamas' surprise attack on 7 October.

  • It was first uploaded on Tiktok in September 2023 and shows visuals from Egypt.

How did we find out?: We noticed a watermark showing a TikTok username '@eslamre1' in the video.

We noticed a TikTok username in the video.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

Taking a cue from this, we used a VPN tool to look for the account, since the platform is banned in India.

This led us the account of Eslam Refaat, where we saw three similar videos marked "part 2", "part 3" and "part 4", which resembled the video in the claim.

Both visuals show a red building with a blue roof, and people coming down with parachutes.

(Source: X/TikTok/Altered by The Quint)

These videos were published in late September this year and one part was geotagged with 'Masr Al Jadidah', which is a district in Cairo, Egypt.

One of these videos was uploaded on 28 September and was geotagged as a video from Egypt.

(Source: TikTok/Screenshot)

We also saw a person wearing a jacket with the words 'El Nasr SC' on the back. Combining this with Egypt as a search term, we found that it represented El Nasr Sporting Club, a Cairo-based football club.

The woman is wearing club merchandise.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

A search for the club on Google Maps showed us a football stadium, which is where the video from the claim was shot.

In both videos, one can see a tall, broad beige building next to the shorter red and blue one.

(Source: X/Google Maps/Altered by The Quint)

To see whether the user had deleted the video seen in the claim, we looked for them on web archiving websites.

This led us to an archived version of the user's account, which showed that the video was present on their account earlier.

(Swipe to view both images.)

We also came across another archive, which showed that the user had uploaded a second video to clarify that the video was not from Palestine.

The user had shared a video clarifying that the viral one was not from Palestine, but later took their post down.

(Source: TikTok/Screenshot)

Conclusion: A video from Cairo, Egypt, which predates the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, is being falsely linked to the war.

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