Recently, a photograph and a report about Israeli strikes on Syrian army positions in the province of Quneitra were circulated by Facebook groups, public pages, and individual accounts, but investigation shows that the photographs were taken in Gaza, Palestine.
These accounts attributed the report to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, but the investigation revealed that the Observatory used a different photograph than the one being circulated.
By using a reverse image search on Yandex and Google the TRUE team investigated and reached the following results:
The photo was taken of an Israeli airstrike on Gaza, Palestine, and has no relation to Syria.
The German website Deutsche Welle released the photograph on August 7, 2022, along with a report headlined “Ceasefire Between Israel and the Palestinian Jihad Movement Comes Into Effect,” according to one of the Google reverse image search results.
The photograph was cropped and resized to obscure some details, such as the source and photographer’s name.
The photograph is owned by Hatem Moussa, an Associated Press reporter in Gaza.
Without noting that it is from last year, some Arab websites and media outlets also used the photograph to report ongoing events in the Gaza Strip.
Arab media had used it as a thumbnail for an interview that was uploaded to YouTube earlier this year, claiming it was from an Israeli bombing on Damascus, according to a Yandex reverse image search.