2015 video of Israeli soldiers detaining Palestinian boy falsely linked to ongoing war in Gaza

By: Ankita Kulkarni
November 7 2023

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Screenshots of posts circulating online claiming that it shows Israeli soldiers abducting a Palestinian kid in front of his father. (Source: X/Facebook/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

What is the claim?

A video of three armed soldiers detaining a child and a man is circulating on social media with a claim that it shows a Palestinian father trying to stop Israeli soldiers from "abducting" his son. In the video, we can see three soldiers walking away with a very young boy, and a man is soon seen talking to the soldiers who first manhandle him and detain him as well.

One Facebook post (archived here) shared the video with the title "Israeli Soldiers Abduct Child." The accompanying caption read, "Can you imagine just how helpless and humiliating it must feel to be a Palestinian father watching heavily armed enemy Israeli soldiers abduct your children and take them off to god knows where to be beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and detained for months or years? (sic)" 

Several other posts on Facebook (archived here) and X (archived here) have also shared the video with similar claims, and many users have also alleged (archived here) that the incident took place amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which on November 4 entered its fourth week.

Screenshots of posts circulating online claiming that it shows Israeli soldiers abducting a Palestinian kid in front of his father. (Source: X/Facebook/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the video is from 2015 and shows the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) arresting a six-year-old boy and a Palestinian activist who had intervened and questioned the boy's arrest. There is no father-son narrative to the story, and the video is unrelated to the current war.

What did we find?

Through a reverse image search, we found that the video was first shared on social media in November 2015. The Facebook account 'Popular Struggle Coordination Committee' had shared the exact same video on November 17, 2015. The video caption reads, "Israeli occupation forces arrest of activist, and head of board members, of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination committee, Munther Amira, and 6-year-old child, Abdallah Lutfi Yousef. From Aida refugee camp (sic)."

We then came across a report by the Palestinian media outlet, PNN Network. The report, which was published on November 17, 2015, said that Israeli forces arrested both Amira and Yousef in front of a refugee center in Aida Camp, north of Bethlehem, West Bank. It quoted local sources noting that while Israeli forces were arresting the child, identified as Yousef, activist Munther Amira was passing by and intervened, demanding the child's release. However, Amira was also arrested and reportedly transferred to an army camp in the vicinity of Rachel's Dome in north Bethlehem. The report added that the child was released an hour after detention due to pressure from the Palestinian military liaison, and Amira was transferred to an unknown place. 

Another article published on November 17, 2015, by Ma'an News Agency, which predominantly operates in the Palestinian territories—Gaza Strip and West Bank, reported similar details and mentioned that the child, Yousef, had told a correspondent that he and his friends were playing in the refugee camp garden when Israeli soldiers began firing tear gas at them. When he tried to escape, a soldier caught hold of him and escorted him to the northern entrance of Bethlehem, the agency quoted him as saying.

An Amnesty International article from March 2018 identified Amira as the coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee— "a community-based group, which provides legal aid and advocacy support to activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

The above evidence establishes that the man intervening and stopping the soldiers in the viral clip is not the child's father but an activist and the head of a community-based group. The video does not show a father trying to protect his son from being abducted by Israeli forces, but activist Munthera Amira questioning a child's detention.

Although reports do not specify the reason for the child's arrest, the video is old and unrelated to the current Israel-Hamas war.

The verdict

An old video from 2015 that shows Israeli forces detaining a child and a Palestinian activist in the West Bank is now being circulated with a false claim that it depicts a Palestinian man watching Israeli forces abducting his son amid the ongoing war. Therefore, we have marked the claim as false.