Video of 50 Cent concert frenzy in Norway falsely linked to Israel-Hamas war
- Published on November 24, 2023 at 09:33
- 3 min read
- By AFP Malaysia
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"Here they are pretending to be in chaos," reads a Malay-language TikTok post shared on October 28, 2023.
"Hamas is not like that, Israel. They fight with proper conduct and skill."
The 15-second video, which has more than 5,300 views, shows a crowd running down a corridor past a room full of camera and production equipment.
It was posted in an account with more than 42,000 followers and a bio that includes the hashtag "#freepalestine".
"This is what happened in Israel yesterday afternoon," reads sticker text on the video, adding in Malay: "Look at their deception using media channels with more footage of Israelis fleeing for their lives".
The information war running in parallel with the deadly Israel-Hamas conflict on the ground has seen conspiracy theorists accuse ordinary Palestinians and Israelis of being "crisis actors" -- feigning injuries and deaths to garner sympathy and demonise the other side.
The trend was previously seen with mass shooting in the United States and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but experts have seen these types of claims skyrocket during the Israel-Hamas war, which has killed thousands of civilians on both sides.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
About 1,200 people were killed in the attack, mostly civilians, and an estimated 240 hostages seized, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel's retaliatory air strikes and ground invasion have killed more than 14,800 people -- also mostly civilians -- in Gaza, according to the Hamas government in the Palestinian territory on November 23, 2023.
However, the video circulating on social media -- which has attracted 488,000 views on Facebook and TikTok here and here -- is not related to the war.
50 Cent concert
A reverse image search on Google found a similar video posted on the official Instagram account of American rapper 50 Cent on October 4, 2023 (archived links here and here).
The post says: "Crowd storms in once the doors open for @thefinallaptour," referring to The Final Lap Tour by the musician (archived link).
The video includes a geotag for Stavanger, a city in Norway, where he held a concert two days earlier, on October 2, according to his website (archived link). The venue of the concert is Forum Expo (archived link).
Below is a screenshot of the Instagram post, with the geotag highlighted by AFP.
A further keyword search on the concert and location found a longer video on 50 Cent's official Facebook page, posted on October 3, 2023 (archived links here and here).
The text on the clip's opening scene reads: "The Final Lap Tour / Stavanger Norway".
The part of the clip showing a crowd of people running down a corridor can be seen from the 47-second mark.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the video shared in the false post (left) and the genuine clip from 50 Cent's Facebook page (right):
AFP has previously debunked another video of fans of popstar Bruno Mars that was falsely shared as concertgoers fleeing Hamas.
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