Videos doctored to claim Bollywood star Akshay Kumar voiced pro-Palestinian views
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on November 17, 2023 at 07:00
- 3 min read
- By AFP Pakistan
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One of the altered videos shows the actor wearing a black cap with a concerned look on his face. He appears to say in Hindi: "What is happening with the Palestinians is not right. It is wrong."
The clip was posted on October 20 in a YouTube Short, attracting more than 9,000 views.
"Stop the cruelty inflicted on Palestine," reads Urdu text overlaid on the video.
A second clip features Kumar close to the camera with Palestinian flags superimposed on his face.
"Akshay loves Palestine, come do a duet with me and everybody say: 'Free Palestine,'" he appears to say in a mixture of Hindi and English.
It was uploaded to YouTube Shorts on October 10 and has more than 825,000 views.
These posts surfaced following an unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 by Hamas militants, who stormed across the border from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and seizing around 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel retaliated with a relentless aerial bombardment of the densely populated territory and has also launched a ground offensive. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 11,500 people have been killed in the violence, including thousands of children.
Kumar has a massive fanbase across India and Pakistan and is known for his action movies.
The clips of him were also posted on Facebook here and TikTok here and here, prompting a flood of messages thanking the actor.
"Free Palestine. P.S. Salute to Akshay Kumar," wrote one social media user.
Another wrote: "Akshay Kumar, real superstar. I support free Palestinians. Thank you Akshay, sir."
Drug use in Bollywood
Keyword searches and reverse image searches found the original videos were posted to Kumar's Instagram in 2020 and August this year.
One of the clips was uploaded on October 3, 2020 and shows him talking about accusations of drug use in the Bollywood film industry (archived link).
"I cannot lie to you and tell you this problem does not exist," Kumar says.
"Use of drugs is a legal matter and I am confident that whatever action will be taken by our law enforcement agencies and courts will be absolutely correct."
He does not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Below is a screenshot of the manipulated video (left) and Kumar's original video (right), with matching items highlighted by AFP.
The other video was posted to Kumar's Instagram in August this year and shows him promoting the film "OMG 2" (archived link). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is again not mentioned.
A screenshot comparison between the false post (left) and the actor's Instagram video (right) is below.
Kumar has actually genuinely spoken about the Israel-Hamas war, telling Indian television channel Times Now in an interview in October that he condemned "terrorism" and the killing of civilians (archived link).
"Any kind of terrorism is wrong," he says. "Killing is not the answer."
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