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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

War & conflict fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about war & conflict. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,826 published reviews in this topic

VRTNWSWar & conflict

Dit zijn paraglidende Hamasstrijders die Israël binnenkomen.

Publisher’s rating: Onwaar

The claim concerns a social-media video presented as showing Hamas fighters entering Israel by paraglider. VRT NWS says the video’s imagery does not show that claimed event: it identifies a building in the footage by examining its Arabic inscription and the flag displayed on it. Google Translate rendered the inscription as “military university,” and the flag appeared to be Egypt’s.

VRTNWSWar & conflict

Deze beelden tonen Israëli’s die slachtoffers in scène zetten.

Publisher’s rating: Onwaar

The claim concerns footage shared on X and TikTok that appeared to show a film crew, an armed man and a bloodied boy. A caption on one widely viewed X post alleged that Israelis were creating false images of deaths. The investigation says the footage does not show Israelis staging victims; it was filmed during production of the Palestinian short film “Empty Place.” The review describes two checks. A reverse-image search using Yandex found that screenshots from the footage had circulated before the Hamas attack on Israel. It also compared the social-media video with the short film, which tells the story of imprisoned Palestinian Ahmed Manasra. The scene shown in the film from about 1:15 matched the circulating footage. The review further reports that Reuters had examined the footage in 2022 and that the film’s director, Awni Eshtaiwe, said it was made during filming. The same footage had previously been described as showing Palestinians staging victims, but the review rejects both that account and the later allegation about Israelis: its reported provenance is the filming of a short film.

VRTNWSWar & conflict

De tv-ploeg van nieuwszender CNN heeft een aanval vlak bij Gaza in scène zet.

Publisher’s rating: Onwaar

The claim concerns a circulating video that appears to show CNN’s television crew staging an attack near Gaza. The review says the footage shows the crew leaving the road on foot and falling to the ground, while a male voice-over appears to direct them to act frightened. It reports that some social-media posts used the video to accuse CNN of faking an attack. To check the claim, the review says it compared the version with the voice-over to the original CNN video, which showed the team taking shelter from rockets while reporting on the conflict. In the original footage, the voice-over is absent. The review also reports that CNN told Reuters by email that the voice-over was fake. The altered version carried a “The Quartering” watermark. According to the review, the organization described itself on X as a news and content organization, and comments on X indicated that it treated the added voice-over as a meme and also regarded it as fake. The evidence presented therefore points to a satirical voice-over added to genuine CNN footage, rather than the CNN crew staging the attack.

VRTNWSWar & conflict

Dez video toont Israëlische kinderen die opgesloten zijn in Palestijnse kooien.

Publisher’s rating: Onwaar

The claim attributes a video of children in cages to Israeli children imprisoned by Palestinians. VRT’s review examined the viral footage circulated with claims that Jewish children had been locked up by Hamas after its attack on Israel. It reports that the footage was posted online before 7 October and was unrelated to that attack: “de video werd vóór 7 oktober online gepost en heeft niets met de aanval van Hamas te maken.” The review describes how the footage’s earlier posting was checked. Israeli fact-checking group FakeReporter found the account that first posted it on TikTok and captured screenshots in time. Those screenshots, posted by the group on X on 8 October, showed that the video was already four days old—at least two days before the Hamas invasion of Israel. The review also says LeadStories found the original post used a popular TikTok hashtag and an audio track unrelated to the conflict or kidnappings, suggesting it was part of a TikTok trend. The account and video were initially removed, but the account was visible again on 11 October, according to the review’s description of a Nieuwscheckers fact-check. The video’s creator said in another video that he had filmed children from his own family as a joke, not Israeli children, and that he recorded it three days before the invasion. This provenance and the earlier posting contradict the viral attribution of the footage to Israeli children held by Hamas.

VRTNWSWar & conflict

Dit zijn beelden van recente bombardement in Gaza.

Publisher’s rating: Waar

The claim concerns video circulating as footage of recent bombardments in Gaza. VRTNWS investigated the specific video it received, rather than relying only on the captions attached to it. The newsroom concluded that the footage did show recent bombardments in Gaza, after checking both its location and its timing. To locate the video, the journalists compared its visible coastline and piers with Google Earth, then looked for matching agricultural areas, buildings and road patterns. They report finding the same houses and intersections in the video and on Google Earth, establishing that it was filmed in Gaza. The article also describes the video’s on-screen Hebrew caption and date, 09.01.2023. Its translation indicated attacks on Hamas targets in Gaza, but the newsroom found no evidence of bombardments around 9 January and considered whether the date might have the zero and one reversed. The decisive provenance check was the logo in the video’s upper-left corner. Using a reverse-image search, the newsroom traced it to the IDF spokesperson’s communications operation, then found the same video in an IDF social-media post dated 9 October 2023. The post’s Hebrew caption, as translated by software, said that dozens of aircraft had recently attacked targets near Al Furqan. VRTNWS also says it found no older version of the video. Together, the location match, the IDF post and the absence of an older version supported its conclusion that the footage showed recent bombardments in Gaza.