Claim: Video shows Lebanese citizens celebrating the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah by Israel.
Fact: The video is from January 2020 when demonstrators in Beirut, Lebanon demanded the setting up of a new government to bring an end to the economic crisis in the country at the time.
On 28 September, X user @NiohBerg posted a video (archive) purportedly showing Lebanese citizens singing and celebrating the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group. The user wrote, “Lebanese citizens are also celebrating the kotletification of the tyrant Nasrallah. Well deserved! Party all night.”
On 27 September, an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah. The assassination has sparked fears of an escalated regional war in the Middle East.
Israel invaded Lebanon early on 1 October 2024 amid the increased airstrikes that have displaced approximately a million people, according to the BBC.
Later that night, Iran launched 180 missiles at Israel. The IRGC said the attacks were a response to the killing of Hezbollah members and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Abbas Nilforoshan, who was also killed on 27 September.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets and missiles at Israel in solidarity with Palestinians since 7 October 2023.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check investigated the claim once we noticed that an X user (archive) had pointed out that the video in question is from January 2020, in the comments on the post. The user shared a screenshot of the TikTok video that matched the video in the claim.
Screenshot of the comment
The original 32-second long video on TikTok, by the user “k.reem,” is from January 2020 and has nothing to do with the recent assassination of Hassan Nasrullah. The video shows demonstrators singing and waving flags of Lebanon on the street and the caption of the post stated [when translated from Arabic via Google Translate], “We are the revolution and the anger…”
Soch Fact Check then conducted a keyword search for “We are the revolution and the anger” and found the caption is part of the lyrics of the song by Julia Boutros, which protestors chose for their demonstration chants after protests erupted in October 2019.
We also found the same TikTok user posted a clarification on 29 September, aware that her old video had been circulating with a false claim. “My friends, be careful of all the fake posts and don’t believe everything they share. They used a very old video of mine from 2020, claiming it shows me and my friends celebrating the assassination of a political figure. Just to clarify: the video is from the Lebanese revolution, and I don’t live in Lebanon currently.”
Taking cues from the user’s 29 September post, we looked up news reports and found that in January 2020, protests demanding the setting up of a new government turned violent in Beirut, Lebanon, with more than 350 demonstrators injured in clashes with the authorities.
The protests began in October 2019 when the government at the time proposed new tax measures (archive). “Then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri set a 72-hour deadline to fix the economic crisis and then resigned when the protests continued,” The Washington Post reported.
The lapsing economy worsened in January 2020 without any government at the helm, as protests continued into their fourth month. Demonstrators chanted “We will not pay the price,” a reference to the national debt, which stood at “$87 billion (€78 billion) or 150% of GDP” at the time.
The week of 19 January 2020 was called “a week of anger” by the protestors.
Virality
The X post garnered 1.8 million views.
It was shared on X here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
The same video appeared on Instagram without a caption here.
Conclusion: The viral video does not show Lebanese citizens celebrating the assassination of Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. It is from January 2020 when there were protests in Beirut, Lebanon to demand the setting up of a new government amid the economic crisis facing the country at that time.
Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
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