Claim: A video depicts an aerial battle between Israeli fighter jets and helicopters and Palestinian fighters shooting them down.
Fact: The footage in the claim is, in fact, an old clip from the video game Arma 3.
On 15 April, a Facebook user shared a video (archive) claiming that it depicts an aerial combat between Israeli fighter jets and helicopters and Palestinian fighters who shoot them down.
“The war between Israel and Palestine has intensified. Israel is bombing with warplanes, and the Palestinian mujahideen standing below have also shot down dozens of Israeli planes. May Allah help the Palestinian Muslims. Amen, O Lord of the Worlds…” the caption reads.
Israel’s deadly war in Gaza
Israel’s war in Palestine has killed at least 51,000 Palestinians and injured another 116,343 between 7 October 2023 and 15 April 2025, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The latest attack claimed the lives of at least 29 people on 21 April across Gaza, including an attack on the tent camps for displaced Palestinians.
Recently, Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinian medics and emergency responders. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson claimed the vehicles carrying the medics “were identified advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals.”
However, the IDF retracted its statement after an investigation by The New York Times. The footage captured by a slain paramedic revealed that the ambulances were clearly marked and their emergency headlights were on, contradicting the statement by the IDF, the publication reported.
An audio analysis of the footage by Bellingcat further shows that hundreds of shots were indiscriminately fired by the IDF toward the convoy.
“The footage exposes the truth and dismantles this false narrative,” said the Palestinian Red Cross Society in a statement after sharing the video of the attack on X.
Fact or Fiction?
A reverse-search of keyframes from the video revealed that it is from a video game. In fact, it appears that the same video was falsely linked to Israel’s war in Palestine and consequently debunked in the past as well.
In October 2023, Boom, a member of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), published a fact-check (archive) on the same video. At that time, viral posts online claimed that the video shows helicopters being shot down during the Israel-Hamas conflict, which broke out on 7 October 2023.
Titled “Video From Arma 3 Peddled As Helicopters Shot Down In Israel-Hamas War,” the article found that the 10-minute long footage predated the war in Gaza and was created “using a simulation game called Arma 3.” Originally uploaded on Facebook and YouTube by a user called “BELAL The Gamer”, the footage has since been deleted. However, it contained a watermark with the name of the user which helped Boom trace the original video.
It seems that the video Boom debunked in October 2023 has been rehashed and shared again in the claim being fact-checked as the same watermark can be found in it too.
AFP also fact-checked the video (archive) in October 2023. Their article, titled [translated from Arabic] “Video of two Israeli helicopters being shot down?” also found that it was not linked to the conflict but was actually from Arma 3.
Moreover, Factly, an Indian publication, also debunked the same video in October 2023 here (archive). In conclusion, the footage in the claim is actually from the video game Arma 3, and it is entirely unrelated to the ongoing war in Palestine.
Virality
The Facebook video was viewed 647,000 times and liked 3,200 times.
It appeared on Facebook here (archive), here (archive), and here (archive).
Conclusion: The video in the claim does not show a conflict between Israeli jets and Palestinian fighters in Gaza. The clip is from the video game Arma 3.
Background image in cover photo: The New York Times
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