Claim: A video shows that Imran Khan decided against standing up for Benjamin Netanyahu as he entered the room at an international summit.
Fact: Netanyahu never attended the SCO CHS meeting, which took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in June 2019, since Israel is not a part of the organisation. The claim that Khan did not stand up for Netanyahu is false.
On 12 February 2024, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Ali Muhammad Khan posted (archive) a video of former prime minister Imran Khan on X (formerly Twitter), with the following caption:
“ہمیں یاد ہے زرا زرا تمہیں یاد ہو کہ نہ یاد ہو !
[We remember every little thing regardless of whether you remember or not!]”
The video shows ex-PM Khan at an international summit where he decides against standing up as someone — who the video claims is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — arrives at the event. Text superimposed on the clip reads as follows:
“Sees who is coming, Sees Israeli Pm, Sits back down while everyone is standing.”
Ali Muhammad Khan is a former member of the National Assembly who served as the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs from 2018 to 2022. In the 2024 general election, he contested for the National Assembly from the Mardan III (NA-23) constituency as an independent candidate and was assigned the electoral symbol of a “dolphin”. He emerged as the victor with 102,175 votes, according to Form 47 released by the Election Commission of Pakistan.
Different electoral symbols were allotted to PTI-backed independent candidates after the party’s cricket bat — symbolising Khan’s past as a cricketer — became a bone of contention ahead of the general elections and was taken away (archive) through a Supreme Court ruling on 13 January.
Amid the 2024 general elections in Pakistan, which took place on 8 February, Soch Fact Check observed an influx of false and misleading claims.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes from the video and found that they matched the cover image for an OpIndia news story (archive), published on 14 June 2019 with the headline, “Video: Pak PM Imran Khan breaks diplomatic protocol at SCO summit, remains brazenly seated while welcoming other leaders.”
The OpIndia article states, “The diplomatic etiquettes of Imran Khan, the parody Prime Minister of the terror state of Pakistan, is being questioned after he broke the diplomatic protocol once again at the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit held in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek on Thursday.”
An uncut video included in the same article, posted (archive) on 13 June 2019 by the PTI’s X account itself, shows that the leader who entered after Khan was Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and not Israel’s Netanyahu.
Prime Minister of #Pakistan @ImranKhanPTI's Arrival with other World Leaders at Invitation of President of Kyrgyzstan for Opening Ceremony 19th Meeting of the Council of the Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan (13.06.19)#SCOSummit2019 pic.twitter.com/fYdKYN3Fv7
— PTI (@PTIofficial) June 13, 2019
The clip posted by the PTI shows the former Pakistani prime minister arriving at the SCO Summit at the 0:16 mark. He is then seen sitting down, standing up, and sitting down again at the 0:24, 0:31, and 0:38 marks, respectively. Shortly thereafter, Russia’s Putin enters the hall.
According to a curtain-raiser (archive) issued by Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry at the time, Khan went to Kyrgyzstan, officially known as the Kyrgyz Republic, on 13 and 14 June 2019 “to attend the 19th Meeting of the Council of the Heads of State (CHS) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)”.
As per a press release (archive) by Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, the country’s delegation included the foreign minister at the time, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, then-Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Youth Affairs, Muhammad Usman Dar, and then-Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood.
Apart from Khan and Putin, among the attendees of the meeting of the SCO’s CHS were India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, China’s President Xi Jinping, Kyrgyzstan’s President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, and Mongolia’s President Khaltmaagiin Battulga, as per a press release (archive) issued by the group, indicating that Israel’s Netanyahu was not at the event.
As per the information available (archive) on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s home page, “The SCO currently comprises eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four Observer States interested in acceding to full membership (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia), and six ‘Dialogue Partners’ (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).” Israel is not mentioned in any of these three lists, indicating that the country is not a part of the organisation.
Pictures of the attendees available on Getty Images (archive) and The Associated Press (AP) Newsroom (archive) also prove that Netanyahu was not at the event.
The Israeli prime minister was at a separate, unrelated meeting with Ford Motor Company Executive Chair William Clay Ford Jr at the time of the event, as is evident on his official X account.
Virality
The video posted by Ali Muhammad Khan has received a whopping 1.8 million views as of the time of writing.
Soch Fact Check also found the video posted as a Facebook Reel here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It was shared here as a standalone post.
We also found that the clip was posted on TikTok in January. Using a TikTok timestamp extractor tool, we found that this, as well as this video, were originally uploaded to the platform on 23 January and 8 January 2024.
Conclusion: Since Israel is not a part of the organisation, Netanyahu never attended the SCO CHS meeting, which took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in June 2019. The claim that Imran Khan did not stand up for Netanyahu is false.
Background image in cover photo: ImranKhanOfficial & Netanyahu
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