Claim: A video shows Israeli soldiers being arrested recently.
Fact: The video surfaced online as early as November 2024, and there is no evidence that it shows Israeli soldiers. Multiple news reports, in fact, suggest that it likely shows Syrian rebels from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham killing Syrian army personnel.
On 23 May 2025, a user on Facebook posted a video that allegedly showed Israeli soldiers being arrested. The caption of the post read as follows in Urdu and Sindhi:
#اسرائیلی فوجیوں کو گرفتار کر لیے گیے”
دل بہت خوش ہوجاتا ہے…..
#اسرائيلي فوجين کي گرفتار ڪيو ويو
“دل خوشي سان ڀرجي وڃي ٿو…
This reads as follows in English:
“#Israeli soldiers were arrested.
The heart becomes very happy. . . .
#Israeli soldiers arrested
Heart fills with joy…”
We came across two other instances of the video on Facebook from 26 and 27 May 2025, respectively, that claimed it showed Hamas militants apprehending Israeli soldiers. However, these posts vary slightly in that they claim the Israeli soldiers arrested actually turned out to be Indian.
A Google search for “Indian soldiers Gaza” led us to reports of three Israeli soldiers of Indian origin who were killed in Gaza. Staff-Sgt. Halel Solomon lost his life in November 2023, Sgt. Oz Daniel in February 2024, and Staff Sergeant Geri Gideon Hanghal in September 2024. Additionally, an Indian ex-army officer working for the United Nations was killed in May 2024 in a “suspected Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip”.
Hence, while it is true that Israeli soldiers of Indian-origin have been killed during military service in Gaza since 2023, this article only aims to fact-check whether the video is actually related to these events. It does not aim to fact-check whether Israeli soldiers or Israeli soldiers of Indian-origin were apprehended and killed.
Fact or Fiction?
We conducted a reverse-image search of the video’s keyframes and found clips from as early as 30 November 2024 on X (formerly Twitter) with the claim that it shows the execution of Syrian, not Israeli soldiers. The video is also longer than the one in the original claim and shows the soldiers being murdered after being apprehended. The Arabic caption of this post translates to English as:
“Al-Nusra Front forces execute Syrian army prisoners”.
Running a Google search for “Al-Nusra”, we found that it was the “precursor organization” to the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group responsible for the ousting of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Several posts on X from 30 November, and another from 1 December, claimed that the video showed militants from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham killing Syrian army personnel. Two posts in particular used alternative terms to describe the Syrian rebels, like “Erdogan’s Al-Qaeda thugs” and “Israeli-Turkish backed terrorist groups” as Turkey has been reportedly funding rebel groups supporting HTS, and allegedly also runs border crossings with the organisation.
The video also appeared on 30 November 2024 on LiveGore, a platform which describes itself as a “reality news website”. This post, too, claimed to show Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebels killing Syrian government forces as the caption said:
“HTS terrorists began their ISIS practices, executing surrendered SAA soldiers in Aleppo”.
Most importantly, besides social media posts, we found reports by multiple Iranian news outlets that also claimed the video shows Syrian and not Israeli soldiers. Hamshahri Online, the “online version of the Hamshahri Iranian daily paper”, shared the same video on 10 December 2024 with the headline, “Mass execution of a number of Syrian army” (translated from the original Persian). The article attributed blame to “terrorists” that were advancing in “various regions of Syria”.
An earlier report from the same outlet, dated 1 December 2024, also featured a still from the video as shown below:
The still shows the man holding a gun before he kills the apprehended soldiers by firing at them. The headline in the news report above reads as follows in English:
“Terrorist who executed a number of Syrian soldiers killed”.
Other Iranian news reports included one by Tabnak and another by Arsheh Online. The former, is a Tehran-based “information platform”, while Arsheh Online describes itself as “social and development-oriented media that prioritizes social journalism”. Tabnak’s report on the video, published 30 November, reiterated that it showed “terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” executing Syrian soldiers. However, Arsheh Online’s report from 1 December did not name the HTS. It stated that the video showed Syrian soldiers killed at the hands of “terrorists” advancing across the country.
To confirm whether the video does, in fact, show Syrian soldiers, Soch Fact Check conducted a Google search for “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham November 2024”.
This search led us to widespread news reports about how the group had staged a massive “rebel offensive” to retake the city of Aleppo on 27 November 2024. It was reported by multiple mainstream outlets including the BBC, Al Jazeera, and The Guardian. According to a report by Al Jazeera, the Syrian military stated that “dozens of its soldiers had been killed or wounded in fierce battles with armed terrorist organisations”. The BBC noted that “more than 180 combatants on both sides” had been killed in the fighting.
Thus, these reports confirm violence between the Syrian military and rebel groups in late November 2024, around the same time the Iranian news outlets reported on it and when the video initially emerged online. The similar timing lends credence to the claim that the video is from Syria, not Israel.
Reverse-image searches suggest that the video only recently resurfaced online with the Israeli soldiers’ claim.
Virality
On Facebook, the claim appeared here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the claim that the video showed Hamas militants apprehending Indian soldiers was shared here and here.
Conclusion: The claim that the video depicts a recent arrest of Israeli soldiers is misleading. It first appeared online in November 2024, and several news reports from Iranian news outlets claim that it shows Syrian rebels from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) capturing and executing Syrian army personnel.
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Background image in cover photo: DW