Old Video Shared as Israelis Dancing After Iranian President’s Helicopter Crash

The video has been available since at least 2021 and predates the death of Iranian President Raisi.

Fact-Check | The video is old and is being shared with a misleading context.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing some people dancing is being shared to claim that it shows Israeli soldiers celebrating and dancing in Gaza after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's helicopter crash.

What have users said?: An X (formerly Twitter) premium user shared the video with a caption saying, "Watch |Upon hearing reports of the Iranian president's helicopter crash, Israeli occupation soldiers in Gaza uploaded footage of themselves celebrating and dancing."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

The post had garnered over 19 thousand views on the platform. Archives of similar such claims can be viewed here, here, and here.

Are these claims true?: No, the video could be traced back to at least December 2021. This predates the death of President Raisi in a helicopter crash.

What led us to the truth?: A reverse image search using the help of Google Lens search led us to a clearer and watermark-free version of the same clip shared on an X handle.

• This video was published on 3 November 2023, which clearly showed that the incident predated Iranian President's helicopter crash.

• Taking this forward, we performed a Google Lens search on the clearer version of the video and came across a longer version published on an unverified YouTube channel.

• It was uploaded on 26 December 2021 and its title when translated to English said, "Interesting: the soldiers dance Yemenite."

Conclusion: While we could not independently verify the location or context of the video, it is clear that the incident is unrelated to Iranian President's helicopter crash.

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