Claim: Social media video shows football fans singing a pro-Palestinian song in a Qatar stadium during the FIFA World Cup 2022.
Fact: The claim is false. The video is not from FIFA 2022 but is actually from a 2019 football match that took place in Morocco.
On 27 November 2022, Twitter user Brig Ashfaq Hassan posted a video with the caption, “Great moment. First time in world’s History. The whole Qatar FIFA stadium sang together unitedly in favor of Palestine against Jews and Israel.”
The 2 minutes and 19-second video shows a stadium crowd singing a song called “Oh our beloved Palestine”.
Many recent video clips show FIFA fans and some Arab officials in Qatar expressing pro-Palestine sentiments. The host country has no diplomatic relations with Israel and remains a supporter of the decades-long Palestinian cause for statehood. The video went viral after clips surfaced online of fans with Palestinian flags, apparently refusing to talk to Israeli media.
Fact or Fiction?
A reverse image search of the video keyframes on Google found the same clip corresponding to a larger video posted by a YouTube channel on 24 September 2019.
The Arabic video caption, when translated into English, reads, “The brilliance of the Palestinian song by Rajawi from their contest against Palestinian Hilal Al-Quds”.
At the 29-second mark of the Youtube video, the misleading clip can be seen.
A further keyword search led to a news report by Morocco World News that said the footage was shot during a football match at Casablanca’s Mohammed V stadium. Supporters of Raja Casablanca expressed their support for the Palestinian cause during their team’s game against the Palestinian team Hilal Al-Quds.
Google images of the Mohammed V stadium also shows same landmarks as that in the video shared with false claim.
Soch Fact Check previously debunked false and misleading claims about FIFA Qatar World Cup 2022 here, here, and here.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 30-day period from 5 November to 5 December using the following search terms:
- “Whole Qatar FIFA stadium sung together unitedly in favour of Palestine”
The search term received 1,120 interactions across 14 video posts on Facebook. The video posts with higher interactions can be seen here, here, here, here and here.
On Twitter, the misleading video received 250.7k views, 8,508 likes, 4000 retweets. It is also available here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The video of fans singing a pro-Palestine song is not from the FIFA World Cup 2022. The video is from a 2019 match between two football teams, Rajawi and Palestinian Hilal Al-Quds, where fans of the former team sang in solidarity with Palestine.