By: Azra Ali
April 17 2024
Old image of Eiffel Tower illuminated with Israeli flag shared as recent
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Screenshots of a viral post. (Source: Facebook)
Fact-Check
The Verdict Misleading
The photo has been online since October 2023. The Eiffel Tower was not lit up with the Israeli flag after a retaliatory attack launched by Iran.
Claim ID 5e01e009
What is the claim?
A photo of Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower lit up in blue and featuring the Star of David—recognized by many as the symbol of Jewish identity— is going viral on social media. The photo has surfaced just days after Iran launched an attack against Israel in retaliation for its Syrian consulate being blown up. France has joined the U.S. and the U.K. in condemning the attack by Iran, extending solidarity with Israel, which has so far neither denied nor confirmed that it attacked the Iranian consulate.
On April 15, two days after Iran launched its strike, a Facebook user shared the now-viral photo of the Eiffel Tower with the caption, “The Eiffel Tower last night in Paris, France.” The post (archived here) had over 12,000 likes and 1,300 shares at the time of writing. Archived versions of similar posts can be found here and here.
Screenshots of the viral posts. (Source: Facebook/X/Screenshot)
What is the truth?
Through reverse image search, we found that the same picture was shared on Facebook by Daniel Fasquelle, a French politician and a former member of the National Assembly of France. The caption in the post shared on October 10, 2023, read, “Total support for Israeli victims of terrorism and their families.”
We also found that the French embassy in the U.S. had shared the now-viral picture on LinkedIn six months ago. The caption of the post read, “France stands in full solidarity with Israel, a friendly country facing a wide-scale terrorist attack.”
A Google search led us to several news reports from October 2023 stating that the Eiffel Tower was lit blue and showed the Star of David. We found multiple news outlets sharing various angles similar to the now-viral image.
A photo from a news report from October 2023 which shows the Eiffel Tower illuminated with the Israeli flag. (Source: EuroNews/Screenshot)
We also found similar photos of the Eiffel Tower taken from different angles uploaded on Alamy, a British stock photography agency. According to the website, the Eiffel Tower was illuminated with the colors of the flag of Israel, which has the Star of David in the middle, on October 9, 2023, to show solidarity with the Jewish country after it was attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
However, there are no recent news reports mentioning that the Eiffel Tower was recently illuminated with the Israeli flag or the Star of David. We also did not find any recent pictures or announcements from the French embassy or any government source that the European nation expressed its solidarity with Israel through the iconic monument. All the pictures with the Star of David date back to October 2023. If the Israeli flag had been displayed on the Eiffel Tower recently, it would have been reported by several media outlets.
According to media reports, French President Emmanuel Macron has called for Iran’s isolation and stressed to ‘avoid an escalation’ amid rising tensions with Israel.
The verdict
The now-viral photo of the Eiffel Tower illuminated with the Israeli flag dates back to October 2023. Therefore, we have marked this claim as misleading.