Social media posts claiming 'UAE sent aid to Israel' share unrelated footage
- Published on June 26, 2025 at 10:14
- 4 min read
- By AFP Middle East & North Africa
- Translation and adaptation Raevathi SUPRAMANIAM , AFP Malaysia
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The 35-second clip starts with an Etihad Airways plane landing at an airport, then switches to footage of pallets of aid being loaded into a plane with "UAE Aid" stickers on them.
"Food aid sent by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Dubai directly to Tel Aviv, Israel to be distributed to Israelis affected by the war," reads a Malay-language Facebook post on June 21, 2025 which has been viewed more than 459,000 times.
The post goes on to criticise the UAE for sending aid to Israel while "people in Gaza don't have enough food", while the Hebrew-language text on the clip refers to medical assistance purportedly provided by the country.
In 2020, the UAE normalised ties with Israel as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords under US President Donald Trump's first administration, which also saw Israel establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain and Morocco (archived link).
Abu Dhabi also has close ties to Israel's top ally the United States, with Trump visiting the Emirati capital as part of his Gulf tour in May.
The videos surfaced as Iran and Israel exchanged devastating strikes after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities on June 13. Iran's health ministry said Israeli strikes have killed at least 610 civilians, while official figures from Israel said 28 people were killed in strikes across the country (archived link).
The US military bombed three Iranian nuclear sites in what Trump said on June 21 was a "very successful attack", before Iran responded by launching missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar -- the biggest US military facility in the Middle East (archived link).
The UAE denounced the attack by Iran, calling it a "flagrant violation of Qatar's sovereignty and airspace" (archived link).
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic advisor to the oil-rich UAE’s President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, also said the war was "setting back" the wealthy Gulf region (archived link).
Israel and Tehran agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire on June 24.
The clips circulated along with the false claim elsewhere on Facebook, Threads and TikTok, but they predate the war. There are also no official reports that UAE sent aid to Israel.
Unrelated footage
A Google reverse image search led to an article on Jordanian news site Roya News on April 6, 2021 with a picture showing the same scene in the false post (archived link).
The report says it shows the first commercial flight from Etihad Airways arriving in Tel Aviv from Abu Dhabi.
AFP also published footage of the landing on the same day, with a caption saying it shows the company's first passenger service on the route (archived link).
The second part of the false video matches another clip published by AFP on September 13, 2023 showing the UAE preparing rescue machinery and equipment to be sent to Libya (archived link).
It shows one of the planes carrying humanitarian aid from the UAE following Libya's call for international aid after a devastating flood killed thousands of people in the country (archived link).
AFP has debunked several other false claims related to the Iran-Israel conflict.
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