Videos shared with false claims continued to flood social media as the war in Gaza entered its second year, triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack to which Israel retaliated with a bloody offensive in the Palestinian territory. Recent posts condemning Israel were repeatedly shared worldwide alongside a graphic video and a false claim that they show an Israeli police officer strangling a Palestinian child. In fact, the circulating clip predates the Israel-Hamas War and shows an incident in Sweden in 2015.
Warning: graphic video
“An Israeli police officer sat on the body of a Palestinian child and strangled him during protests against (sic) the US embassy in Jerusalem on Saturday. The child suffocated and eventually died,” read part of the Thai-language caption to the video shared on Facebook on November 11, 2024.
It shows a man in a fluorescent yellow vest pressing a boy’s face to the ground.
The boy is shown lifting his index finger and reciting the Islamic Shahada creed professing belief in Allah and the acceptance of the Prophet Mohammed as God’s messenger.
Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on November 13, 2024
The post surfaced as the war in Gaza raged on, triggered by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures (archived link).
The militants also took 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip. Some were already killed. Of those, 97 are still held hostage, while 34 are confirmed dead but their bodies remain in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 43,700 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers the figures reliable.
The video was also shared with similar false claims by social media users from Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Australia and Romania.
Comments indicated many users believed the posts.
“I can’t stand it anymore with what Israel has been doing to our Palestinian brothers and sisters,” one wrote.
“Look at the actions of the most wicked Zionist nation done to the children of Palestine,” said another.
There have been frequent protests in Israel following the outbreak of the Gaza war, as Israelis pressured their government to do more to secure the captives’ release (archived links).
But AFP found no official reports about a Palestinian child killed by an Israeli police officer during a protest near the US embassy in Jerusalem.
Moreover, the video is unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and had been previously debunked by AFP after it was circulated with false claims in 2019 and 2023.
Sweden footage
A reverse image search on Google using one of the video’s keyframes found it was actually filmed in Sweden.
A higher-quality version of the clip was earlier published on YouTube by Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan on February 9, 2015 (archived link).
Its Swedish-language title translates as: “Guard slammed nine-year-old’s head into the ground.”
The same newspaper also reported the incident on the same day (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the false post (left) and Sydsvenskan’s YouTube video from 2015 (right):
Screenshot comparison between the false post (left) and Sydsvenskan’s YouTube video published in 2015 (right)
An AFP journalist fluent in Swedish analysed the video from Sydsvenskan and found bystanders could be heard speaking in Swedish “That’s a child” and “How old is he?”
At the beginning of the video, security guards could be seen wearing fluorescent vests with the Swedish words “Ordnings Vakt” or “public service representative” on the front and back. The uniform is commonly worn by security guards who assist Swedish police.
Below is a screenshot from the YouTube video with the words highlighted by AFP:
Screenshot from the YouTube video with elements highlighted by AFP
Moroccan child
AFP also contacted Jens Mikkelsen, one of the journalists who reported on the incident for the Sydsvenskan newspaper (archived link).
In an email on November 3, 2023, Mikkelsen confirmed the video was from the incident he wrote stories about and said the incident happened in the Swedish city of Malmö.
“Yes, that is the boy I wrote several stories about,” Mikkelsen told AFP.
Mikkelsen referred to the boy as Amin and that he was born and raised in extreme poverty in Morocco before he ran away from home at the age of 12 and ended up in Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Morocco.
“He spent several months each night trying to board a ferry to Spain until he finally succeeded. Together with friends, he travelled by train and bus, then hitchhiked to Sweden,” Mikkelsen said.
Another journalist Katia Wagner, who published a book about Amin and other Moroccan boys living on the streets of Stockholm, also reviewed the video (archived links here and here).
Wagner told AFP in an email on November 6, 2023: “That is definitely ‘Amin’ in that video. I met him after the incident in Malmö, when he was in a shelter, and I stayed in contact with him for a while.”
AFP reached out to the Swedish Social Services and the Migration Agency for information about the boy but has not received a response.
The incident was also reported by the France24 outlet on February 11, 2015 which said two private security guards were under police investigation after the incident (archived link).
According to a report from news site The Local Sweden, the two guards did not face charges (archived link).
AFP has repeatedly debunked misinformation related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
