Old video of Israeli police confronting Orthodox worshippers unrelated to Israel-Gaza war

"The Israeli police beat and drove out Orthodox believers and bishops who were going to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, earlier this morning in this manner," reads the Amharic-language post published on October 20, 2023.

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Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on October 24, 2023

It indirectly links the video to the Israel-Gaza conflict by adding that "Palestine was home to all religions, where Christians, Muslims and Jews live together in harmony before it was colonised by Israel".

The post contains a 30-second clip and has been shared more than 110 times.

Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping more than 220 others, according to Israeli officials (archived here).

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says the strikes have now killed over 7,300 people, mainly civilians and many of them children.

The UN has called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire (archived here) in the Gaza Strip as conditions in the enclave continued to deteriorate from catastrophic shortages after nearly three weeks of bombardment.

However, the footage of Israeli police and Orthodox Christians was filmed months before war broke out in October 2023.

Holy Fire ritual

AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the footage.

We established that the video was originally published on the YouTube channel of TRT World, a Turkish state-owned broadcaster, on April 15, 2023 (archived here).

"Israeli forces attack Christians ahead of the Holy Fire ceremony," reads the video's English-language caption.

The full video, which is originally 1'24" long, shows security forces forcefully stopping people from passing through a narrow street.

Thousands of Orthodox Christians perform the so-called Holy Fire rite every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (archived here), the ancient site located in the Old City of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, where Jesus Christ was buried and resurrected, according to Christian teachings. The church has long been a major pilgrimage centre for Christians.

The ritual is performed on the Saturday before Easter. Worshippers wait for a "divine flame" from heaven with which they light candles, marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ (archived here).

For security reasons, Israeli authorities restricted the number of attendants on April 15, 2023 for the second consecutive year, according to AFP (archived here).

This year's ceremony had followed deadly attacks and clashes in Israel, east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, and cross-border fire days earlier between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria.