Post shows planned demolition of building in US, not embassy collapse in Israel
- Published on November 2, 2023 at 16:57
- Updated on November 6, 2023 at 10:04
- 5 min read
- By Erin FLANAGAN
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"The USA embassy in Israel today attack [sic]," reads a TikTok post published on October 26, 2023. Among the hashtags in the caption is "#telaviv", in reference to the coastal city in Israel considered the economic heartbeat.
Viewed nearly three million times, the seven-second clip shows a cream-coloured building collapsing next to a larger glass tower with an American flag on its roof.
"USA embassy in Israel," reads the text overlaying the footage.
The post was shared by an account that regularly publishes disaster videos -- often made by splicing unrelated clips -- alongside false claims about flooding, tornadoes, or violence in various locations.
Israel-Hamas conflict
Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
They also took more than 240 hostages, among them elderly people and young children, based on Israel’s count.
Israel has responded with heavy air and artillery strikes that have killed more than 9,000 in Gaza, according to the latest toll from the Hamas health ministry in Gaza, and plunged the Palestinian territory into a dire humanitarian crisis (archive here).
The US remains Israel’s staunchest ally, though it has publicly appealed for the country to spare the lives of Palestinian civilians (archive here).
In 2018, former US president Donald Trump relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a deeply controversial move that triggered a global outcry, Palestinian anger, and exuberant praise from Israelis (archive here and here).
However, the claim that the video shows the US embassy in Israel collapsing is false.
Virginia, not Israel
Several comments under the false TikTok post suggested the video was filmed in the southern US state of Virginia, not Israel.
Using a keyword search for "building collapse Virginia", AFP Fact Check found local articles and social media posts from 2020 featuring images of a similar building collapsing (archive here and here).
View this post on Instagram
According to the news reports, the building collapse was a planned demolition in Richmond, Virginia, the southern state’s capital.
Footage published by On Demand News on May 31, 2020, specified it showed the demolition of the Dominion Energy Tower (archive here).
A keyword search for "Dominion Energy demolition" yielded dozens of videos showing the planned implosion from different angles, including this one with a large glass building visible to the left of the Dominion Energy Tower (archive here).
In the description of the video, the user says Dominion Energy "moved into the new glass tower to its left".
Using a search on Google Maps, AFP Fact Check found the distinct large glass building seen in the false Tiktok in Richmond, Virginia.
The American flag and "D" on the side of the building seen in the false TikTok are clearly visible in this photo of the Dominion Energy building from the company’s official website (archive here).
In this September 2022 view, the large glass tower is visible while the former headquarters of the energy company is no longer there.
Moreover, the building and surroundings in the false post do not resemble the former US embassy in Tel Aviv, nor the current one in Jerusalem.
There have been no credible news reports that the US embassy in Israel has been damaged in the conflict.
The State Department said: “The US embassy in Jerusalem is intact and continues to operate normally.”
November 6, 2023 Added comment from US State Department
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