“Palestinian child trapped under rubble”? What is the real context of the recording

IN Gaza Strip There is an ongoing armed conflict that began after the Palestinian Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, as a result of which approximately 1,200 people died and 251 were abducted. Since then, following the Israeli response, more than 43,000 Palestinians have died – according to the Gaza Strip's health ministry. Most of the survivors became internal refugees in the devastated Gaza Strip.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas has been exploited by disinformation creators for many months. Last week, a half-minute-long recording showing a little girl looking through a small hole in the wall of a building was distributed on the English-language network. “A Palestinian child trapped under the rubble is waiting for help. What a heartbreaking scene,” read an identical comment in English on the video, which was attached in two separate posts on October 26. One of the entries with this recording was viewed over 5.9 million times, the other – over 2.3 million times. Entries with this material until October 31st published over 260 times.

Also on October 26, X was published post with almost identical content in Polish. “A Palestinian child trapped under the rubble is waiting for help. What a heartbreaking scene. Respect to the Palestinian people for their courage and endurance,” wrote the author; by October 31, the recording had been viewed over 37,000. times. And underneath it was written, for example: “Unfortunately, this is life and we cannot change it”; “I don't know how people can look at such scenes with indifference, I don't know how they can not think about other children dying for a long time in fear, pain and loneliness under the rubble. How can you not condemn it?” Some, however, pointed out: “For a child trapped in the rubble, he is quite happy”; “You can immediately see that this is a lie for the naive. Such photos of children are a classic manipulation” (we keep the original spelling of all entries).

A community note has already appeared under the quoted posts, i.e. an annotation intended to provide more context for the published content or to directly inform that it is untrue. It said the child was not “trapped under the rubble” in the Gaza Strip. It was explained that it was a girl looking through a hole in the wall. A reverse image search allows us to determine that the recording appeared on the Internet on October 26 this year.

The search also leads to a TikTok account called userftdvvrl92i, where two videos were posted: one of them lasts 39 seconds, second – 16 seconds. The first shows the same frames that are available on website X. The second shows a similar frame with a child looking through a hole in the wall, and then – after zooming out the frame – a wider image of the wall with a hole several centimeters above the ground. Then we see an image from the other side of the wall – a small child, probably one year old at most, lying on the floor and rugs, most likely a girl, looking through the hole.

There are several other videos of the same child on this profile. Most of the videos show the girl playing. In one of the entries, the person running the TikTok account referred to a recording that had become popular with the description that it was a child from Palestine. The author, writing in Arabic (v fastingwhere he showed the wall on the other side and how the girl was looking through the hole), he assured about the child's well-being; he explained that the girl did not come from the Gaza Strip, but from Syria. He asked not to spread the recording with the false suggestion that the girl was under the rubble. In another entry handed over again that the recording only shows the child playing.

Therefore, the claim that the video now popular on social media shows a child trapped under the rubble in the Gazda Strip is untrue.

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