Claim: Video shows injured Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s last moments before his death.
Fact: The claim is false. The video allegedly shows a Palestinian citizen and appeared on the internet as early as November 2023.
On 1 August 2024, a video was widely shared on WhatsApp with the text message,
اسماعیل ہنیہ زخمی حالت میں آخری الفاظ جسطرح اہل کوفہ نے حضرت سیّدنا حسینؓ کو پہلے بُلایا پھر شہید کروا دیا، بلکل اسی طرح ایرانیوں نےاپنی پرانی روش کو برقرار رکھا، اسماعیل ہانیہ کو پہلے ایران بلایا، پھر شہید کردیا یا کروا دیا.
Translation [Ismail Haniya’s last words in the injured state. Just as the people of Kufa first called Hazrat Sayyidna Hussain RA and then martyred him, in the same way, the Iranians maintained their old way, called Ismail Haniya to Iran first, then martyred him].
The video shows an injured man speaking in Arabic as a paramedic cleans the blood and wounds on his face.
Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination
On 31 July 2024, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran. He travelled to Iran to attend President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony when a projectile struck his accommodation, killing him and one of his guards.
Hamas and Iran blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death, although the Israeli government has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. Iran has pledged to retaliate, promising “harsh punishment” against Israel. In a statement, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also declared Israel ‘fully responsible‘ for the death of the Hamas commander.
Who was Ismail Haniyeh?
Ismail Haniyeh was a Palestinian politician and Hamas leader who served as prime minister of Palestine from 2006–07. After the dissolution of his government and the establishment of an autonomous Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip, Haniyeh served as the leader of the Gaza Strip (2007–14).
In 2017, he was selected to replace Khaled Meshaal as Hamas’s political bureau chief. Since the beginning of the war in Gaza on 7 October last year, Haniyeh has been the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy, participating in efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse search on the video’s keyframes on Yandex and Google Lens. The results led to an X post from 6 November 2023. The same video can be seen in the post, along with a caption in Arabic. When translated into English, the caption said: “Bleeding with blood… a Palestinian raises his index finger high and chants, We are all with the resistance… a steadfastness that you will only find in Gaza. Gaza resists and will win.”
Another X account also posted the same video and caption on 10 November 2023 where it received 6000 views.
Rana Salahat, a journalist and fact-checker for Tahaqaq, a Palestinian outlet for fact-checking and a member of the Arab Fact-Checking Network (AFCN) since July 2022, also translated the video for Soch Fact Check. She confirmed that the man in the video can be repeatedly heard saying: “We’re sacrifices for the Palestinian resistance”, “We all stand with the Palestinian resistance factions”, and “Our children and our blood are sacrifices for the Palestinian resistance”.
A keyword search on Google led us to the same video, posted by Arabic news aggregator website Nabd on 6 November 2023. The same caption in Arabic accompanied the video, which translates to “A Palestinian raises his index finger high and chants, We are all with the resistance.”
Moreover, no videos of Haniyeh moments before his death were found online, nor was any such footage released through official channels in the wake of his assassination. The video in question shows a man being treated at a hospital or a medical centre, while Haniyeh was killed when a projectile hit his guest accommodation in Tehran, according to the latest reports.
Virality
On X, the video was falsely linked to Ismail Haniyeh here, here and here. On one post it received 496.6K views, 16,000 likes and 7,600 reposts
It was also shared here, here and here on Facebook.
The video was also shared here on Dailymotion and here, here and here on YouTube.
Conclusion: A video showing injured Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the last moments before his death is false. The video has been on the internet since November 2023 and allegedly shows an injured Palestinian man in Gaza.
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Background image in cover photo: ABC News
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