What was claimed
A video shows an Israeli police officer strangling a Palestinian child to death outside the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
Our verdict
False. The footage shows an incident at a train station in Sweden in 2015.
Footage does not show an Israeli police officer strangling a Palestinian child to death
22 November 2023
A video is circulating on social media falsely claiming to show an Israeli police officer strangling a Palestinian child to death.
The video [WARNING: violent content] shows a man in a high-vis jacket wrestling a person on the ground. Multiple posts claim it shows an incident that took place “on Saturday” during demonstrations outside the US Embassy in Jerusalem amid the current Israel-Gaza conflict.
While the video has been shared widely in recent days—including on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok—it has been circulating online since at least 2017 with the claim it shows an Israeli police officer and a Palestinian child.
However, this has never been true.
The footage actually shows an incident at a train station in Malmö in Sweden in 2015. Media outlets at the time reported that two security officers were accused of using “excessive force” against a nine-year-old boy who was reportedly travelling without a ticket. Following an investigation, it was reported that neither security guard would face prosecution. Contrary to the claims online, the boy was not killed during the altercation.
Full Fact has seen many examples of videos being miscaptioned as relating to recent events in Israel and Gaza, including CCTV clips of hospital explosions in Syria, aerial footage of a bombing in Sudan and a firework display in Istanbul. You can read more of our work countering this type of misinformation here, as well as our guide on fact-checking misleading videos relating to the conflict.
Image courtesy of David Castor
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 false because the video shows an incident in Sweden in 2015.