Women leaving Palestine with Indian flag in hand to avoid getting shot? No, old video shared out of context

A video of a group of young Muslim women donning hijabs carrying the Tricolour in their hands has been doing the rounds on social media. It is claimed that men and women are seen in the clip leaving Palestine with the Tricolour in their hands because Israel does not fire on the Indian flag.

Journalist Sudhir Mishra posted the video with the same claim. (Archived link)

फिलिस्तीन के हमास “आतंकी” तिरंगे का उपयोग करके फिलिस्तीन से निकल रहे हैं?

क्योंकि तिरंगा देख कर इजराइल नहीं मार रहा इन आतंकियों को। pic.twitter.com/KYNUw2gQIX

— Sudhir Mishra 🇮🇳 (@Sudhir_mish) October 17, 2023

A user named Diksha Choudhary also tweeted this video and linked it to the Israel-Palestine conflict. (Archived link)

Another user named Dilip Kumar Singh also made a similar claim while tweeting the footage. (Archived link)

Alt News also received numerous requests to fact-check the video on our WhatsApp helpline number (7600011160).

Fact Check

A reverse image search on a frame taken from the viral video led us to a video uploaded on Instagram by a user named Jawad Hussain on September 4, 2023. The caption of this video reads, “Arbaeen Walk 2023”. We found the same video uploaded on an account named ‘Maqsad-e-Karbala’ on September 1 of this year and by a user named Falak Haq on August 31. Its caption also reads “Arbaeen Walk 2023”. In other words, this video is more than two-month old. However, the conflict between Israel and Palestine commenced on October 7. This means that this video is not connected to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

 

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A post shared by Falak Haq (@falak_haq120)

Speaking to BoomLive, Falak’s husband Ali Haq revealed that it was he who had shot the video. The woman seen with the black bag on the right in the video is his wife. He left for Karbala from Najaf on August 30-31 and reached there on September 1. This was around the time he had filmed the video and posted it on Instagram.

Arbaeen Walk is a pilgrimage undertaken by followers of Islam. People from all over the world travel to the city of Karbala in Iraq. We also found a report by NDTV in which numerous Indian Muslims are seen arriving in Iraq for the pilgrimage in the month of Arbaeen. The video features Indian Muslim men and women who arrived there carrying the Indian flag.

To sum it up, many social media users shared the video of Muslim women carrying the Indian flag with the false claim that women were leaving Palestine with the Indian Tricolour in their hands because Israel would not fire on the Indian flag.