Claim: A video shows the IDF identifying a hostage guardian list in a Hamas hideout.
Fact: The list is a misidentified calendar that lists the days of the week. On 14 November 2023, Israeli ground operations broadcasted their investigative findings of Hamas hideouts at the Al-Rantisi hospital in Gaza. In a video posted on the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the head of the IDF Spokesperson Unit, Daniel Hagari is shown giving a tour of his findings at the hospital.
At one point in the video, he points to a chart on the wall and says, “There is a list, this list in Arabic, in Arabic this list says, ‘we are in operation, the operation against Israel’, started in the 7th of October. This is a guardian list where every terrorist writes his name, and every terrorist has his own shift guarding the people that were here.
What’s going on in Gaza?
On 7 October 2023, the Izzeddin al-Qassam Brigades — the military wing of Hamas the Islamist group that rules Gaza — launched (archive) a “surprise attack” on Israel via sea, land, and air. In response, the Israeli government formally declared (archive) war on Hamas on 8 October 2023.
According to a 19 November 2023 update by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 11,078 Palestinians have been killed, 68% of whom were women and children, and over 27,490 injured since the 7 October attack. Similarly, at least 1,200 Israelis have been killed and upwards of 5,400 injured.
Ever since the October 7 attack, a flood of misleading, old, and out-of-context pictures, videos, and claims have surfaced in the media.
Fact or Fiction?
Soon after the IDF video report was released Arab social media users quickly pointed out that the hostage guardian list was a calendar that listed the days of the week since the 7 October attack.
To investigate this claim Soch Fact Check asked contacts fluent in Arabic to read and translate the image for us; they confirmed that the alleged list was, in fact, a calendar. We also verified the claim independently using Google Lens to scan and translate an image of the hostage guardian list. The translated image corroborated claims by Arab social media users that the chart shows the days of the week. This was further validated by searching up a list of the days of the week, spelt in Arabic. It is written as follows:
Saturday: السبت
Sunday : الأحد
Monday : الاثنين
Tuesday: الثلاثاء
Wednesday: الأربعاء
Thursday : الخميس
Friday: جمعة
A comparison of these words with the words written across the chart reveals that the days of the week matched with the words seen in the video, which further solidifies that it is a calendar and not a hostage guardian list.
According to IDF spokesperson Hagari, the list was titled, ‘we are in operation, the operation against Israel.’ We asked our contacts fluent in Arabic to verify this, but they contradicted it and said the title instead reads, “7/10/2023 Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood.” Google Lens further confirmed this by translating the title as the same.
The calendar also starts from 7 October, the day the conflict began. Soch Fact Check, therefore, rates the claim in the video as False.
The IDF’s video — including the clip under question — was further circulated by news organisations. CNN’s show, The Source, initially aired the clip of the incorrectly identified calendar. The questionable clip was later quietly cut from the video. However, CNN’s anchor for The Source, Kairan Collin, tweeted the unedited version of the video which contains the debunked claim. That tweet is still up as of writing time.
American far-right news syndicate, Breitbart, also shared the claim on Facebook.
Since then, the IDF has also backtracked on their claim that this was a hostage guardian list saying, “a mistake was made in the translation of part of the table,” as reported by Israeli news channel N12. Still, as of writing time, the IDF’s official X account hasn’t taken down their tweet which contains the clip of the debunked claim.
Virality
The video posted by the official X account of the IDF amassed 445,000 views. CNN anchor Kaitan Collin also shared the claim in a tweet with 12 million views.
The claim was also shared on Facebook here, here, and here, amassing over 13,000 views.
Conclusion: The list seen in the video of Al-Rantisi Hospital was not a hostage guardian list; it was a calendar marking the days since the beginning of the conflict.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com