Claim: A video shows people raising Palestinian flags at a public gathering in France to celebrate the win of the left-wing parties in the July 2024 elections.
Fact: The video predates the results of France’s 2024 elections; therefore, it has nothing to do with the celebrations and stands false.
On 8 July 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user @LuanaGoriss posted (archive) a video depicting a public gathering and captioned it as follows:
“Islam has won a victory in France, and waves the ‘Palestinian’ flag.”
France elections
The results showed (archive) that “no single political party or alliance of parties has won a clear majority” but that “three alliances emerged on top after the vote count”. These included the New Popular Front (NFP), Ensemble, and the National Rally (RN).
The New Popular Front (NFP) won the most seats after the second round of voting, while President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance, Ensemble, came second and made (archive) “an unexpected comeback”. However, France now has a hung parliament (archive) as none of the parties could secure a majority of 289 of the 577 seats to form the government.
Voting took place after “Macron called snap elections last month after his coalition was trounced by National Rally in European parliamentary elections, gambling that the possibility of a far-right government would push French voters to reaffirm his mandate,” according to this report (archive).
Another report (archive) termed the elections “cordon sanitaire”, defining it as a “principle that mainstream parties must unite to prevent the extreme right from taking office”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the video and found that the video predates the announcement of the French election results.
We came across a matching clip posted on 1 June 2024 (archive), almost a month before the viral X post. Captioned, “France… this is absolutely epic, this is a revolution… RESIST 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸”, it gained over 2.3 million views as of writing time.
Other posts on X — here, here, and here — containing the same video were posted around the same time on 2 June 2024. Another one, by an account that, according to its bio, tracks demonstrations in Lyon, France, is captioned, “🔴 LYON: Rally in support of the Palestinians this Saturday, June 1st!”
🔴LYON : Rassemblement en soutien aux palestiniens ce samedi 1er juin ! #Lyon #Gaza #Israel #GazaMassacare #manif1erjuin #rafah #palestine #gazaunderseige pic.twitter.com/IdmwoIsINM
— Bismuth Back (@Bismuthback) June 1, 2024
We also came across the same video in a now-deleted X post by Mohamad Safa — who runs Patriotic Vision (PVA), a “non-government organisation with special consultative status with United Nations” — from 8 July 2024, a day after results of the 2024 French elections were announced, indicating that it is perhaps from here that the false claim originated. It is captioned, “They tried to erase Palestine, but the world has become Palestine. Thank you France. Don’t stop talking about Gaza.”
In an article that investigates some viral claims pertaining to the elections, France 24‘s Les Observateurs, also known as The Observers and a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), noted that the video showing dozens of Palestinian flags flying above a crowd of demonstrators was “filmed on June 1, 2024 in Lyon, during a rally organized in support of Palestine”. The protest was reported on by various French outlets, including France 3 Auvergne Rhône-Alpes and Le Progrès, and “took place in Place Bellecour” in a bid “to request a ceasefire in Gaza”, it wrote.
“As reported by local media and images posted on social media , the main celebrations that took place in Lyon on Sunday evening took place at Place de la République, not Place Bellecour. Only a few Palestinian flags are visible in the images taken there,” it added.
The Observers also mentioned that the Australian edition of Sky News broadcast the video of the 1 June demonstrations, with its presenter stating, “This is what the victory rally of the new French government looks like, and as you can see in this video, there are many more Palestinian flags than French flags being waved.” The report has since been taken down.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the viral video has no connection to the 2024 French elections and the claim is false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim here, here, and here on X, here, here, and here on Facebook, and here and here on YouTube.
Some news websites also carried the same video or screenshots from it; these can be found here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The video showing dozens of Palestinian flags raised at a public gathering in France predates the announcement of the country’s legislative election results and is not related to the consequent victory celebrations. Therefore, the claim is false.
Background image in cover photo: Hugo Douchet
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