By: Iryna Hnatiuk
November 22 2023
No, this video does not show Israeli soldiers placing a flag at Al-Shifa Hospital
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Fact-Check
The Verdict Misleading
The video shows Israeli Defense Forces soldiers putting a flag on a school in Gaza.
Claim ID 8b95043e
Context
A video (archived here) of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers arranging an Israeli flag on the building is circulating on Facebook with a claim, “This is the IOF putting up a flag at Al-Shifa Hospital."
Although the video does show a IDF soldiers installing an Israeli flag, the building is a boys school in Gaza.
In Fact
The video contains a Telegram channel watermark. We found it was published on a Telegram channel on November 14 — the day before IDF entered the hospital. The description in Hebrew says these are Israeli soldiers in the center of Gaza, but it doesn’t mention the hospital.
The footage shows the letters “U.N.” on the ground. Across the Gaza Strip, there are 183 schools ran by the United Nations’ Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA). Juliette Touma, director of communications for UNRWA, confirmed to Reuters, “This is a UNRWA school in Gaza City.”
We geolocated the video and discovered that it shows the Gaza Preliminary School for Boys.
Source: Telegram/Google Earth (Screenshots)
Verdict
The video shows IDF soldiers putting the Israeli flag on a building in Gaza. However, the building is not Al-Shifa Hospital but a school. Therefore, we have marked this claim as misleading.