menu-control
The Jerusalem Post

Social media videos claiming to be Ismail Haniyeh’s final moments are false, iVerify confirms

 
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh (Left) next to old image of injured Gazan civilian (Right) who is not Ismail Haniyeh, according to iVerify report. (photo credit: REUTERS/AZIZ TAHER/FILE PHOTO, SCREENSHOT/X)
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh (Left) next to old image of injured Gazan civilian (Right) who is not Ismail Haniyeh, according to iVerify report.
(photo credit: REUTERS/AZIZ TAHER/FILE PHOTO, SCREENSHOT/X)

iVerify confirmed that videos claiming to show Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s final moments are actually old footage of an injured Gazan.

Videos circulating on social media since Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran claiming to show Haniyeh’s final moments, are old videos of an injured Palestinian, UN-affiliated fact-checking tool iVerify confirmed on Thursday

Since the death of the prominent Palestinian political leader and one of the terror organization Hamas’s key figures Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday, videos circulated on social media, all showing a severely injured man and claiming these are recordings of the terrorist’s final moments.

 In this handout photo provided by the Iranian Presidency, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, attends a meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Tehran, July 30, 2024.  (credit: Handout photo by the Iranian Presidency via Getty Images/JTA)
In this handout photo provided by the Iranian Presidency, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, attends a meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Tehran, July 30, 2024. (credit: Handout photo by the Iranian Presidency via Getty Images/JTA)

However, the following day, a report on iVerify—a United Nations Development Programme and CEJ project—dismissed these claims, stating they were false. Moreover, according to iVerify’s analysis, conducted by iVerify Pakistan’s team, the injured man seen on those social media posts is an injured Gazan resident, and the footage is old.

Advertisement

To confirm that the injured man was not Ismail Haniyeh, the Pakistani team at iVerify reverse-searched the image to identify its origins.

Old footage mistaken for Haniyeh’s death

While researching, the team discovered that footage of the injured Gazan man first appeared “on Arabic news aggregator website Nabd on November 6, 2023.” Additionally, iVerify confirmed that the old footage was shared on social media with a similar caption as in Nabd, specifying the man was Palestinian.

Finally, the video claiming to show Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in his last moments does not match the actual events, iVerify’s team determined.

Haniyeh and one of his guards were killed by a projectile hitting their accommodation in Iran. The video, however, shows a bloodied man receiving medical treatment and a woman with a child - details that were not related to Haniyeh’s assassination, according to iVerify.

×
Email:
×
Email: