Claim: A video shows a young Egyptian boy giving food to Palestinians after drilling a hole in the wall.
Fact: The claim is false. The clip is actually from a 2012 Palestinian documentary “Infiltrators” which shows the struggles of Palestinians in the West Bank.
On 21 December 2023, a user posted a video (archive) on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption, “The zeal of this Egyptian teenager who created a hole in the border wall of #Egypt and #Gaza and delivers bread to the residents of Gaza is more than many #Arab and Islamic rulers. He says: I have delivered a thousand loaves of bread to them so far.”
The video shows a young boy smuggling food (bread) from a hole in a wall to the other side of the wall.
Fact or Fiction?
To investigate, Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search of the keyframes in the video on Yandex and Google. The results on Yandex showed a film review of “Infiltrators” on the website, E-Flux. The same clip as that of the viral video is included in the review too.
The website reads that the documentary film “Infiltrators” was directed by Khaled Jarrar in 2012. According to the description, “(the) picture shows the uncertain and tense search for a route across, under, or over the border wall, Palestinians seek to penetrate the highly militarised West Bank. Alternating between cigarette breaks, detours, waiting, and moving the film depicts the cunning, unnerving, and constant struggle to defy captivity and occupation.” The same video was also posted on E-Flux’s Facebook page on 23 November 2021.
Google search results showed a 2015 video posted by Jordan-based news outlet Al-Ghad on Facebook. When translated into English, the Arabic language caption reads, “Smuggling Jerusalem cakes to the West Bank through the apartheid wall. This video is a clip from the 2012 movie “Infiltrators” by director Khaled Jarrar.”
Furthermore, Soch Fact Check found an article on the documentary published by Al-Jazeera Arabic on 24 December 2012, which clearly states that the documentary reflects the suffering of the Palestinian citizens in the occupied West Bank, at the Israeli checkpoints, and the apartheid wall that cut off the land and tore apart the Palestinian families and families living on both sides of it. t The locations in the film, Beit Hanina, Beit Nabala, Bethlehem, Al-Walaja, and Qalandia are also mentioned in the same article.
Virality
In Pakistan, media outlets including Jang and ARY News Urdu published a news story on their websites, based on the falsely shared video.
On X, the video received 1.5 million views, 37k likes and 13k reposts. The archived versions can be seen here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the video was shared with an Urdu caption and the archived versions can be seen here, and here.
Conclusion: The viral video does not show an Egyptian boy smuggling food into Gaza. The clip is from a 2012 documentary film that shows the daily struggles of people in the West Bank.
Background image in cover photo: Adobe Stock
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