What was claimed
Images of a little girl peering through a small gap have been shared online with a Palestinian flag emoji, and the suggestion that she is in distress.
Our verdict
This is misleading. The images are taken from a video which shows a child playing and looking through a hole in the wall. There's no evidence it was filmed in Gaza or the West Bank.
Images of a little girl poking her hand and face through a gap have been shared on social media with a Palestinian flag emoji, and the suggestion that she is in distress.
The pictures often feature overlaid text which reads: “The World is still silent when those eyes speak everything😭🇵🇸”. Other posts include hashtags such as #FreePalestine, #SupportPalestine and #PrayForPalestine, suggesting the picture shows a girl in Gaza or the West Bank.
These are screengrabs from a video we fact checked last year, when we found it appeared to have been first shared on TikTok on 25 October 2024. The account later shared other footage on 27 October appearing to show the same child looking through a hole in a wall. A caption explained that the child was playing, and said in Arabic that “there is nothing wrong with the girl” and “she is not in Gaza, but in Syria” (translated by Google).
The account holder told Full Fact at the time that “the girl is not in Palestine, she is in the Syrian camps” (originally in German, translated by Google). We were not able to independently verify this, but found no other evidence to suggest the video was filmed in Gaza or the West Bank.
Miscaptioned footage is a common form of misinformation we see online, especially during significant international stories such as the conflict in the Middle East. It’s important to consider whether what you’re seeing is genuine before sharing, and our guides to verifying images and videos can help with this.
You can find more of our work concerning events in the Middle East on our website.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the images are taken from a video which shows a child playing and looking through a hole in a wall, and there’s no evidence it was filmed in Gaza or the West Bank.
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