Claim: An image shows a Palestinian boy sleeping next to his parents’ graves amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
Fact: The image is unrelated to Palestine; it was shot as a conceptual project by Abdul Aziz Alotaibi, a photographer from Saudi Arabia, who posted it on his social media on 3 January 2014. The boy in the picture is his nephew.
On 3 June 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user @HumaZhr posted (archive) a picture of a boy apparently sleeping in between two mounds of rocks, which appear to be graves, and headstones. The child is covered in a red patterned blanket, while his head rests on a pillow.
The accompanying caption, which includes a flag of Palestine, is as follows:
“He sleeps next to his parents grave 💔🇵🇸”
The X post came days after Israel’s offensive in Rafah, a city where “more than 85% of the Palestinian territory’s population had sought shelter”, according to a report (archive). On 28 May, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said (archive) that in the past three weeks, “more than 1 million have fled” the city.
Rafah attack
A deadly strike (archive) by Israel on Rafah killed 50 people and wounded around 250 on the night of 26 May 2024. The report included an update (archive), stating that at least 21 more individuals were “killed in an attack near the International Medical Corps American hospital”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed (archive) the civilian deaths in Rafah a “tragic error”. The airstrikes came just days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered (archive) the Middle Eastern country to stop its actions, including the planned “military offensive”, in the city.
Israel’s airstrikes were condemned by leaders around the world, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, and the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy head, Josep Borrell (archived here, here, here, and here).
What’s going on in Gaza?
On 7 October 2023, Hamas attacked (archive) a border area of Israel, sparking the ongoing war (archive) in Palestine.
Over 36,500 Palestinians have been killed and more than 83,000 injured, as per a 5 June 2024 update (archive) by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). At least 1,200 Israelis have been killed and upwards of 5,400 injured, while 124 Israeli hostages remain in captivity.
Ever since the 7 October attack, a flood of misleading, old, and out-of-context pictures, videos, and claims have surfaced in the media.
On 29 December 2023, South Africa invoked (archive) the Genocide Convention — officially the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), requesting the Court to indicate provisional measures over the war in the Gaza Strip.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image and found that it is not only old but also unrelated to Palestine.
Google Lens led us to a 2014 entry on The Museum of Hoaxes, which states that it was linked to the war in Syria at that time. In the website’s ‘Links and References’ section, the source is a 17 January 2014 article by Beirut.com.
According to the aforementioned article, the image — a conceptual project — was posted online on 3 January 2014 by Abdul Aziz Alotaibi, a photographer from Saudi Arabia and the boy in it is his nephew, Ibrahim. The website quoted him as saying, “I’m a photographer and I try to talk about the suffering that is happening in society, it’s my hobby and my exaggeration is intended to deliver my idea.”
“It’s absurd how people can easily be manipulated without going back to the source and the facts,” Alotaibi told the website.
The article on Beirut.com contains a link to a Reddit thread where the picture was posted with the false caption linking it to Syria. In the comments, a user shared Alotaibi’s post on X in which the photographer issued a clarification, saying, “هذي الصورة الاصليه مع كواليس الصورة مصور ولد اخوي براهيم وموجوده في حسابي بالانستقرام [This is the original photo, with behind-the-scenes footage, taken of my nephew, Ibrahim, and is available on my Instagram account.]” The accompanying hashtag reads, “#ابومتعب_الامريكي_يسرق_صورتي [AbuMitib_The_American_Steals_My_Photo].”
Soch Fact Check found Alotaibi’s account on Instagram, where he had uploaded the image in black-and-white and in colour, as well as pictures of the shoot from behind the scenes here and here in 2014. He photographer also shared a post of gratitude to media outlets that had reported on the misinformation and disinformation, as well as the clipping of an article by the Al Sharq newspaper.
The black-and-white image from 3 January 2014 is captioned, “مالقى بين الاحياء مسكن سكن بين امه وابوه #تصويري اتمنى الفكره تنال اعجابكم كل شخص يكتب عباره عن هالصوره ويحكي القصه اللي فهمها من الصورة [He did not find a home among the living, so he lived between his mother and father. #MyPhotography. I hope you like the idea. Each person writes a phrase about this picture and tells the story that they understood from the picture].”
The coloured version, which was posted on 7 January 2014, is captioned, “#تصويري قد يشعر بعض الاطفال بان جسدي والديه الميتين احن من اجساد حيه قست قلوبها 💡 هذي صورة اخرى بمعالجه اخرى اتمنى تنال اعجابكم 😚 [#MyPhotography Some children may feel that the bodies of their dead parents are more tender than the bodies of living people whose hearts have hardened. 💡 This is another photo with a different treatment. I hope you like it 😚].”
Alotaibi also put up another post on 17 January 2014 that shows the same child posing with a victory sign (V sign), along with a caption that reads, “من كواليس الصورة اللي سرقة ونسبوها لطفل بالشام [Behind-the-scene of the stolen photo that was attributed to a child in Damascus].”
Among the outlets that had investigated the picture back in 2014 were Mic and Foreign Policy, as well as HuffPost, which includes the link to an article by Netherlands-born reporter Harald Doornbos, who called and spoke to an “annoyed” Alotaibi.
“I love photography. Every artist has ideas in his head. So I had the idea to make a project whereby I show in pictures how the love of a child for his parents is irreplaceable. This love cannot be substituted by anything or anybody else, even if the parents are dead,” Alotaibi told Doornbos.
The reporter also explained what the photographer told him, writing, “To finalise his art project, Abdul Aziz al Otaibi took his car and drove three weeks ago to the outskirts of Yanbu, 250 kilometres away from Jeddah. Here he build [sic] from stones two graves. He asked the young son of his sister to lay in between the graves and cover himself with a blanket. ‘Of course I would never ever put a child between two real graves,’ he says, ‘I would be very much against that.’”
According to Doornbos, the picture went viral after it was shared on X by “American Muslim convert @americanbadu”, who “claim[ed] the picture is from Syria and suggest[ed] the dead parents of the boy were killed by the Assad-regime”.
It is @americanbadu, or ‘ابو متعب الامريكي,’ who Alotaibi referred to in the hashtag, “#ابومتعب_الامريكي_يسرق_صورتي [AbuMitib_The_American_Steals_My_Photo]”, included in his X post. A further search led us to a 24 June 2012 article, which states that the real name of Abu Mit’ib is Joshua Van Alstine.
On 17 January 2024, Alotaibi posted a screenshot of the X post in which Mit’ib linked the image to Syria and wrote, “#ابومتعب_الامريكي_يسرق_صورتي صورة من تصويري يسرقها وينسبها لطفل من الشام تم قتل والديه وش تحس به الناس لما تكذب 😠😠 [AbuMitib_The_American_Steals_My_Photo A picture of mine that he steals and attributes to a child from the Levant whose parents were killed. How do people feel when they lie 😠😠].”
Alotaibi has also posted about the same picture multiple times on X here, here, here, here, here, and here since 2014.
In the past, the same image has been linked to Syria and Yemen and consequently debunked by Reuters, USA Today, Australian Associated Press (AAP) FactCheck, and Africa Check.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the photo in question was staged for a conceptual project in 2014 and has no connection to the ongoing war in Palestine.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim on X and Instagram here, here, and here.
Author Khaled Beydoun, an associate law professor at the Arizona State University’s (ASU) Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, also posted the image linking it to Palestine here and here on Instagram and X, where he has over 2.4 million followers and 300,100 followers, respectively, but deleted it later.
However, it was too late as the claim spread with Beydoun’s caption to other social media platforms. Such posts can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The image is unrelated to the ongoing war in Palestine; it was shot as a conceptual project by Abdul Aziz Alotaibi, a photographer from Saudi Arabia, who posted it on his social media on 3 January 2014. The boy in the picture is his nephew.
Background image in cover photo: Liam McGarry
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