Video shows US fighter planes in Nevada, not 'Russian jets in Palestinian territory'
- Published on December 4, 2023 at 11:06
- 4 min read
- By Jan Cuyco, AFP Philippines
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"Palestine. Today Russian jets Safely Landed Palestine For their Help (sic)," reads text overlaid on the video, which has been watched more than 390,000 times since it was posted to Facebook on October 23, 2023.
The seven-minute film shows military aircraft taxiing, taking off and landing. "If this is even real, I don't know anymore. This is so scary," says an accompanying Tagalog-language caption.
It was shared as Israel pummelled the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip with air strikes following a cross-border attack launched by Hamas gunmen on October 7.
Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the unprecedented attack, and an estimated 240 hostages seized, according to Israeli officials.
Israel's subsequent aerial and land campaign in Gaza has killed more than 15,500 people, according to Hamas officials, and rendered large parts of the territory's north uninhabitable.
A week-long pause in fighting allowed for hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The video of the military aircraft was also shared elsewhere on Facebook including here.
While Russia says it has flown several shipments of humanitarian aid -- including food, clothing and portable cookers -- to Egypt, to be delivered on to neighbouring Gaza, the video does not show Russian fighter jets in the Palestinian territory.
US fighter jets
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the footage led to a YouTube video uploaded on March 9, 2021 (archived link).
This video is titled: "F-16 Fighting Falcon Fighter Jet Take Off U.S. Air Force." An accompanying caption says they are jets from the 20th Fighter Wing and the 64th Aggressor Squadron taking off from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada in 2018.
Other versions of this footage were circulating here and here as early as December 2018 (archived links here and here).
A close look at the symbols on the fighter jets, seen at the 12-second and 14-second mark in the falsely shared video, shows they are insignia used by US Air Combat Command and the 20th Fighter Wing.
Subsequent keyword searches found the Facebook video mirrors two clips from 2018 available on the website of the US Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), run by the Department of Defense (archived link).
A jet seen in the first part of the falsely shared video corresponds to an aircraft with the 20th Fighter Wing in footage uploaded by DVIDS on December 14, 2018, except the image is flipped horizontally (archived link).
This video's description says it was filmed during Red Flag exercises, which are held several times a year at the Nellis base (archived link).
Below are screenshot comparisons between the falsely shared video (left) and the video uploaded on DVIDS (right):
Other clips of the 20th Fighter Wing during the same military exercises were published by the Nellis base's official Facebook page on December 18, 2018 (archived link).
The latter half of the falsely shared video -- showing camouflaged jets from different angles -- corresponds to footage of the US Air Force's 64th Aggressor Squadron that was uploaded by DVIDS on November 28, 2018 (archived link).
Below are screenshots of the falsely shared footage (left) alongside the video posted to DVIDS (right):
The logo of the 64th Aggressor Squadron can be seen on a fighter jet at the 2:45 mark in the falsely shared video.
The terrain in the footage also matches Google Maps imagery of the Nellis base (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the falsely shared video (left) and the air force base as seen on Google Maps (right), with corresponding elements highlighted by AFP:
Misinformation around the Gaza war has flooded social media, the most viral of which have been debunked by AFP here.
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