Old footage of pro-Palestine Chicago rally spreads after Hamas attack

"This is Chicago America thousands of people are out on the street to support Palestine," says an October 8, 2023 post sharing the clip on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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Screenshot from X, formerly known as Twitter, taken October 9, 2023

The same video, which shows people parading through the street with a large Palestinian flag, spread widely on X -- part of a flood of misinformation on the platform after the Hamas assault began. Many posts use the same or similar language to describe the apparent display of solidarity.

Hamas conducted a massive rocket barrage and sent a wave of fighters who gunned down civilians and took more than 100 hostages, including Americans and other foreigners. Israel officially declared war on Hamas the following day, and its army later said it struck hundreds Hamas and Islamic Jihad sites in the Gaza Strip. The conflict had killed thousands by October 10.

Protests in support of both Israel and Palestinians have bubbled up in New York and other major US cities. Local news outlets in Chicago, the largest city in the state of Illinois, reported that Palestinians gathered outside the Israeli consulate October 8 and marched through downtown (archived here, here and here).

But the video circulating online does not show those demonstrations.

A reverse image search reveals the same footage appeared on Facebook and X as early as May 17, 2021 (archived here and here).

Thousands of demonstrators took to downtown Chicago on May 16, 2021 to call for an end to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, according to local news reports (archived here and here).

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed 42 people that day, part of a bloody 11-day conflict that cost hundreds of lives. Hamas fired thousands of rockets toward Israel before a ceasefire.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict here.