Misleading: Video shows Pakistani influencer wearing keffiyeh, not Palestinian fighter in Gaza
A short video clip showing a man putting a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headdress that has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance, on a young woman has been shared thousands of times on Chinese social media, alongside a claim that it shows “a Palestinian father getting his daughter, a Hamas soldier, ready to fight in the war.”
The earliest version Annie Lab found was an 18-second video published on Douyin on Oct. 15, 2023, days after Israel’s war on Gaza began.
The first 11 seconds show a man wrapping a keffiyeh around a young woman’s head. The video text says, “This Palestinian father puts on a scarf on his daughter before she goes to the frontline to fight for the country.”
The rest of the clip shows shots of women wearing what appears to be military uniforms marching and standing in formation.
A similar video, which shows only the man and the young woman, was shared here and here on Bilibili on Oct. 17, 2023, with a similar claim.
Other versions of the same video, published on Douyin in December 2023 and April 2024, include an additional clip showing women horse riders carrying a Palestinian flag.
These posts have gained more than 337,000 likes and 8,000 shares altogether.
However, none of the videos are related to the current Israel-Hamas war.
The woman with a keffiyeh is a Pakistani social media influencer, while the clip of female horse riders was taken in Malaysia.
The footage of women in military-like uniforms was taken at a university in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, not the Gaza Strip, years before the latest conflict began.
Keffiyeh video
Through a reverse image search on Google, Annie Lab found the keffiyeh video was originally posted on the Instagram account of a Pakistani influencer called Alishbah Anjum on Aug. 17, 2023, months before the war in Gaza started.
The Instagram post’s caption says “#dubai”, referring to the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Anjum posted the identical 31-second video on the same day on TikTok.
The misleading clip is flipped horizontally from the original footage.
Anjum, who has more than 23 million followers on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, uploaded other clips and photos of her Dubai trip on her Instagram Story Highlight, using the UAE flag emoji as the title.
She also posted a photo of herself in an outfit identical to what she wore in the video on Aug. 18, 2023, tagging it “Dubai Desert.”
Geolocation
Using some elements seen in the footage, such as quad bikes and a red steel building, Annie Lab could geolocate the video to Scenic View, a dune buggy tour site, in Al Madam, a UAE town in the Sharjah desert, around 60 km from Dubai.
Google Street View imagery shows a billboard of Scenic View with a phone number, which led us to their Instagram account.
One of the company’s Instagram clips shows structures that correspond with those seen in the Pakistani influencer’s video, such as the red building, railings and stairs.
Horse-riding video
In the more recent Douyin videos, the clip of the Pakistani influencer is combined with another clip which shows women in Islamic clothing riding horses and carrying a Palestinian flag.
However, the horse-riding clip is not related to the war in Gaza either. It actually shows a group of horse riders in Malaysia who took the video to support Palestinians.
A reverse image search on Google found a longer video was posted by a Malaysia-based social media user called Nadira Johari on Instagram and TikTok in mid-November 2023 and on Facebook in mid-February 2024.
In all of the posts, Nadira expressed her support for the Palestinians.
The misleading video is flipped horizontally from the original footage.
According to the caption of the Instagram post, the footage was shot in Kesuma Stable, outside Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.
Nadira — a mother of three who is a horseback and archery enthusiast — also posted a photo of herself in the same outfit and carrying a Palestinian flag on Facebook in December 2023. “My Name is Nadira Johari. I Stand with Palestine,” she wrote in the caption.
Nadira tagged the four other women in the Instagram video: Amira Nazri, Farra Kamal, Aira and Zhafira Rosman.
Like Nadira, the four women are also based in Malaysia. They posted similar videos on their Instagram account here, here, here and here.
Video of women ‘in military uniform’
Google reverse image searches found that the clips of women in “military uniforms” actually show graduation ceremonies at Al Istiqlal University in the West Bank, taken years before the war in Gaza started.
Al Istiqlal University is a public university specialising in “security, military and police sciences.”
Three scenes in the misleading video were taken from a video published on the university’s YouTube channel on Feb. 4, 2019. They are identical to those shown at the 12:43, 48:18 and 52:18 marks of the original footage.
Two scenes were identical with shots at the 09:46 and 1:32:25 marks of another graduation ceremony video, published on the same YouTube channel on July 20, 2019.
All misleading clips are also flipped horizontally from the original videos.
Buildings in the videos correspond with those seen in Google Maps images of the university, such as here and here.
Al Istiqlal University is located in the city of Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is administered by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attended the university’s opening ceremony in 2015.
Hamas, Fatah’s rival political party, has been the de facto ruler of the occupied Gaza Strip since winning the parliamentary elections in 2007.
