A video of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enthusiastically speaking to a man on a video call is being widely shared on social media.
The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows a Saudi Arabian sheikh “praising” Netanyahu for “eliminating terrorists.”
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)
The Quint received a query to verify this claim on its WhatsApp tipline.
(Archives of more posts on social media here, here, and here.)
But…?: The claim is misleading.
The video dates back to December 2019 and shows a Saudi Arabian blogger Mohammed Saud expressing support for Netanyahu, wishing him luck to win the Likud Party’s leadership elections back then.
How did we find out the truth?: We used InVID, a video verification on extension tool on Google Chrome, and divided the video into multiple keyframes.
We ran a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same video on Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen’s verified YouTube channel.
The video was uploaded in December 2019 and its description identified the person on the phone as one Mohammed Saud.
The video was shared on 27 December 2019.
(Source: YouTube/Altered by The Quint)
We also came across an article carrying a screenshot of the viral video on Moroccan news website HowiyaPress, which mentioned that Saud was a blogger from Saudi Arabia who had contacted Netanyahu days after the latter’s political party’s elections for a party leader took place.
It also carried a link to a now-deleted X post shared by Saud on his account.
This is a translated version of the report.
(Source: HowiyaPress/Screenshot)
We looked for the post on Wayback Machine, an internet archiving platform, and found that Saud had shared it with a caption appreciating Netanyahu.
We found an archived version of the X post.
(Source: Wayback Machine/Screenshot)
Conclusion: An old video of a Saudi blogger and Netanyahu speaking on a video call is being shared with the false claim that it shows a sheikh supporting Netanyahu’s actions.
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