What was claimed
A video shows a girl shaking due to being traumatised by bombings in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Our verdict
This video is actually of a Syrian girl having an epileptic fit, likely in Lebanon.
Video of girl with epilepsy is not related to Israel-Gaza conflict
30 April 2024
A video shared online claims to show a girl shaking due to being traumatised by bombings in the conflict between Israel and Gaza. But the clip has been taken from a TikTok page about a Syrian child with epilepsy who appears now to be living in Lebanon.
Several posts on Facebook describe the girl as being “left traumatised from so many bombings” accompanied with the hashtags #Israel #Gaza, implying she has been affected by bombings in the region.
However, the video is originally from a TikTok page that features several videos of the same girl and discussion of her medical history and treatment. According to Google Translate, the caption with the original video, posted on 22 March, reads “Hey guys, the gifts are open. Comments are open. Please give me gifts with comments” and includes a hashtag for Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Turkey.
Several posts ask for prayers and for healing for a sick daughter. Medical notes posted by the TikTok account and translated by Google say the little girl was born in 2017, is Syrian and a resident of Lebanon. The document says, in English, that she has “Grand Mal Epilepsy”.
Epilepsy is a condition that affects the brain and causes seizures. The NHS says a “grand mal” seizure is now more commonly referred to as a tonic-clonic seizure and “is what most people think of as a typical epileptic fit”.
The NHS describes such a seizure as having an initial ‘tonic’ stage where someone loses consciousness and the body goes stiff, shortly followed by a second ‘clonic’ stage where “your limbs jerk about, you may lose control of your bladder or bowel, you may bite your tongue or the inside of your cheek, and you might have difficulty breathing”.
The girl appears to be in the clonic stage in the video being shared alongside false claims.
The medical records contain the details of Dr Mazen M. Hammoud at Ghazza Center, Chtoura, which is in Lebanon, and other videos also mention Lebanon. There is no evidence the video was taken in Israel or Gaza.
We often see miscaptioned images and videos that don’t show what they claim to in the wake of significant global events like the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza. For tips on how to verify video content before you share it, 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 is of a Syrian girl having an epileptic fit, likely in Lebanon, and there’s no evidence it has anything to do with the Israel-Gaza conflict.