No, This Video Doesn’t Show Palestinians ‘Faking’ Injuries

We found that the video dated back to 2017 and was shot to raise awareness of the dangers faced by Gaza residents.

An old video showing artists applying makeup on people of all age groups is being shared in the backdrop of the escalating violence between Israel and Palestine. The video claims to be the proof of the fact that Palestinians are “forging” their injures to present Israel in a bad light.

However, this video is over four years old and shows a makeup artist's work for a project by French charity ‘Doctors of the World’.

CLAIM

The video is being widely shared with a Hindi claim which says, "गाजा में किस तरह मुसलमानो को पीड़ित दिखाए जाने के लिए इंटरनेशनल लेवल पर किस तरह बच्चो को रंगा पोता जा रहा है ताकि वो खून से सने दिख सके और इजरायल को बदनाम किया जा सके ज्यादा से ज्यादा शेयर करे।"

[Translation: In Gaza, children are being painted with red colour to show Muslim suffrage at an international level, and it can be used to discredit Israel. Share as much as possible.]

This clip was shared by multiple users on Facebook and Twitter, and the archived versions of the posts can be found here, here and here.

The Quint received multiple queries on its WhatsApp tipline about the same.

WHAT WE FOUND

Using video verification tool InVID, we extracted the keyframes from the video and followed it up with a reverse image search. This led us to a longer video report by TRT World, a Turkish state-owned news broadcaster, published on 2 March 2017.

The anchor speaks about Mariam Saleh, a makeup artist working in the Palestinian film industry, who “taught herself to make fake blood for Palestinian films breaking into a business traditionally run by men”.

The report goes on to add that Saleh creates “horrific looking injuries” on actors working on a project by ‘Doctors of the World’, a French charity that aims to raise awareness of the dangers faced by residents of Gaza.

Here’s a comparison of a frame from the two videos.

Further, at around 16 seconds, one can notice a banner in the background which reads ‘simulation’. Even the jackets of the crew carry the logo of French charity, Médecins du Monde or ‘Doctors of the World’.

We also noticed that the viral video carried a logo that read ‘Gaza Post’.

Using Google's tool to filter search results by time while using reverse image search, we found an older video from 15 February 2017 on YouTube, uploaded by channel غزةi بوست (The Gaza Post News).

The 2-minute-and-10-seconds video further had details, and we noticed the jackets of the makeup artists which carried a cartoon graphics that mentioned ‘Special Effect Make-Up’ on the back.

Clearly, the video does not show Gaza residents faking injuries for sympathy. It is a video from February 2017 which shows Mariam Saleh's work as a female special effects makeup artist in Gaza's film industry.

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