A video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, running down several corridors, has gone viral on social media, where users have claimed that it shows him running to a bunker, shortly after Iran launched an offensive attack against Israel in the early hours of 2 October 2024.
At the time of writing this report, this post by X user '@TheMuslim786' recorded over 2.5 lakh views on the platform.
(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, here, and here.)
But...?: The video dates back to December 2021 and shows Netanyahu running in the Knesset, which is the Israeli house of representatives.
How did we find out the truth?: Using Google Lens on Google Chrome, we ran a reverse image search on one part of the viral video.
This led us to an X post, shared on 27 August 2024, which showed that the video was not recorded after Iran's attack on 2 October.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a search with Hebrew keywords 'נתניהו לרוץ' (Netanyahu run) and used a time filter on Google search to get results older than August 2024.
The search led us to an Instagram post, shared by Netanyahu's verified account, on 14 December 2021.
It was shared with a caption in Hebrew, which loosely translates to, "I am always proud to run for you. This was taken half an hour ago in the Knesset."
This video was also shared with the same caption on Netanyahu's X account.
The Knesset is Israel's house of representatives, much like India's parliament system, where political leaders gather to take legislative decisions and action for the country.
Conclusion: An old, unrelated video is being shared to falsely claim that it shows Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu running amid missile strikes by Iran.
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