Post falsely claims video shows Israeli PM 'beaten by crowds'

The post shared on Facebook on September 27, 2025 contains a text overlay in Amharic that reads: “Benjamin Netanyahu was beaten by crowds”. The post has been shared more than 350 times since. 

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Screenshot of the post, taken on September 30, 2025 

The post includes a 25-second video clip that shows a man attempting to push his way through a dense crowd, before falling to the ground and being quickly surrounded as police officers try to shield him.

Gaza war

Israel has faced growing international pressure over its war in Gaza, which has sparked a dire humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory (archived here). Three-quarters of UN members now recognise the State of Palestine. 

The war was triggered by the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 Israelis, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures (archived here).

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 66,148 Palestinians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

Gaza-related misinformation has been spreading widely in Africa, including in Ethiopia, sometimes from pro-Palestinian supporters. 

The video, however, does not show Netanyahu being beaten by the crowd. 

Eli Dalal

AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.

The results established that the video was first shared on September 20, 2025 on X by Bar Peleg, an Israeli journalist who works for the newspaper Haaretz (archived here). 

Peleg shared two video clips of the scene filmed from different angles. 

For the original clip, the X post’s caption in Hebrew reads: “Hundreds of protesters are blocking the entrance to the Likud's toast-raising event in Kfar Saba. Knesset member Eli Dalal arrives at the scene, the police try to clear a path for him, and he falls.”

On that day, hundreds of demonstrators blocked access roads to a complex in Kfar Saba, a city in central Israel, where the ruling Likud party was holding an event ahead of the Rosh Hashanah holiday attended by ministers and members of parliament (archived here). 

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Screenshots of the original video (left) and the false one, taken on October 1, 2025 

A video showing a different angle of the scene was also included in reports by multiple Israeli news outlets, including The Times of Israel, which provided a detailed account of the incident and confirmed the identity of the man seen falling (archived here). 

Its report reads: "Video shows the 70-year-old legislator, Dalal, fall as he makes his way through a crowd blocking the entrance to the event.”

Similarly, the Jerusalem Post published a news story on the same day explaining that Dalal stumbled and fell while trying to make his way through the crowd of protesters (archived here). 

The reports indicate that the protesters were asking for a deal that would guarantee the return of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas as well as an end to the war in Gaza.