What was claimed
A video shows thousands of people at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel fleeing the country.
Our verdict
False. The footage was filmed at Athens Airport.
Video doesn’t show crowds at Israeli airport fleeing the country
8 October 2024
Footage of a crowded airport has been shared on social media with the suggestion it shows thousands of people fleeing an airport in Israel.
The video has been shared on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook with the caption: “thousands are trying to flee Ben Gurion Airport”, which refers to an international airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel. Text overlaid on the footage says: “When you're not the owner of the land, running away is very easy”.
But a closer look at the video shows it’s actually filmed at Athens International Airport.
A sign visible in the background says ‘Love Athens’, which matches videos and images from reports on 30 September about passengers being stranded due to flights to Israel being cancelled. Full Fact has not been able to find the original source of this clip.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued two Conflict Zone Information Bulletins (CZIB’s) on 28 September advising airlines against operating within the Israel and Lebanon airspaces.
The Israeli airline El Al issued a statement on 29 September recommending passengers whose flights to Israel had been cancelled to travel to Athens or Larnaca in Cyprus to “register with travel agents on a waiting list for flights back to Israel”.
Israel has said that its airspace is safe and Israeli airlines have continued to fly within it. Ben Gurion Airport reportedly closed briefly during Iran’s missile attack on Israel on 1 October, but reopened shortly after.
Full Fact has contacted the Instagram account that appears to have first shared the video with the misleading caption, and will update the article if we receive a response.
Miscaptioned videos are a common form of misinformation we see online, especially during significant global news stories. We’ve written about many examples of videos claiming to show recent scenes from the Middle East but that are actually from elsewhere or old clips.
For advice on how you can verify videos, read our guide.
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 video shows people at Athens Airport, not Ben Gurion Airport.