A video of Saudi prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former head of intelligence and ambassador to the United States, criticising Israel has gone viral on social media.
The claim comes days after he criticised Israel over its takedown of Hamas during a speech at a US university in Houston, Texas on 17 October.
What does he say?: In the video, the prince says that Israel considers itself to be "peace-loving upholders of high moral principles" and depicts itself "as a small existentially threatened country surrounded by bloodthirsty killers who want to eradicate her from existence."
He adds that despite their claims, they are "the last of the Western colonising powers of the Middle East," who have forcefully evicted the inhabitants of Palestine" and continued to criticise them on their historical treatment of Palestinians.
How did we find out?: Using relevant keywords and some statements from the speech as search terms, we looked for more information on the viral video.
This led us to a report by Al Jazeera, published on 6 December 2020, with a headline mentioning that a Saudi prince had criticised Israel and a summit in Bahrain.
It also carried some of the statements from the viral video, mentioning that the prince had made these remarks at the IISS Manama Dialogue, Bahrain's security summit, which was also remotely attended by Israel's foreign minister.
We also came across a video of Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud's remarks on YouTube, uploaded to Reuters' verified channel in December 2020.
What had the prince said?: We came across the full version of the prince's remarks on the International Institute of Strategic Studies' (IISS) YouTube channel.
It mentioned that he had spoken at the final plenary session of the Manama Dialogue, during a session on security partnerships in the Middle East. His remarks start two minutes and 40 seconds into the video.
Here, we learned that the prince heavily criticised the Israeli government for "evicting" Palestinians from their home "after the 1948 war. As attested by Israeli historians, they burned the villages of Palestinians to the ground," he said.
He added that the inhabitants who had remained faced the same fate in the 1968 war, when they, too, "were equally dispossessed of their lands despite several UN Security Council resolutions rejecting the acquisition of territory by force."
The prince continued to attack Israel for continuing to colonise more territories in subsequent wars while going "against Geneva conventions that prohibit the change of the status of occupied territories."
Questioning the nature of Israel's democracy, he stated that the country had passed a law which had defined Israel's citizenship as "exclusively Jewish," which denied non-Jewish inhabitants equal rights under the law.
"Israel is the most powerful military between the Atlantic and the Euros. Its might is displayed by its ability to bomb adversaries in Syria willy-nilly without them daring to raise a finger, as it were in defense," said the prince.
Recent remarks: Speaking at the United States' Rice University in Texas, the prince criticised both Israel and Hamas for the ongoing conflict.
Citing the example of India's independence movement, he said that all people under occupation had the right to resist the occupation.
He said, "I do not support the military option in Palestine. I prefer the other option: civil insurrection and disobedience. It brought down the British empire in India and the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe."
Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud's full remarks can be heard here.
Conclusion: An old video of Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud criticising Israel is being falsely shared as a recent video.
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