Video shows Israeli soldiers raising a flag over a Gaza school building, not a hospital
An off-duty Israeli soldier carrying a rifle walks by candles and the national flag honoring those who were killed or taken captive in a brutal cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Associated Press on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, reported on false social media reports that Israeli soldiers were photographed raising a flag over a Gaza hospital. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
CLAIM: A video shows Israeli soldiers placing a flag atop Gaza’s Shifa Hospital.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video shows the soldiers raising the country’s flag over a United Nations-operated school in the city, not the hospital, a U.N. agency spokesperson confirmed.
THE FACTS: Social media users are claiming a viral video shows Israeli soldiers triumphantly raising their nation’s flag over Gaza’s largest hospital, which became a focal point in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas this month.
The video shows three soldiers walking along a flat rooftop with a flagpole bearing the Israeli flag and its distinctive Star of David, along with another purple and white flag.
The group, dressed in heavy military gear, silently affixes the pole to a short column along the edge of the roof before quickly walking away.
“They set up their flag on top of the Al Shifa Hospital To congratulate themselves on “conquering” a place filled with premature babies, injured kids and dead woman,” the text on the brief clip reads.
“This is the IOF putting up a flag at Al-Shifa Hospital,” wrote one user who shared the video on X, formerly Twitter. “A hospital whose patients they terrorized, starved, and bombed for over a month. A hospital whose nurses and doctors and families were killed. They call this victory. They colonized a hospital.”
But the flag wasn’t raised at Shifa Hospital — which Israel raided last week, claiming it hid a command center for Hamas — but at a school elsewhere in the city.
Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, confirmed in an email Tuesday that the building shown in the video houses one of its schools in the Hamas-controlled Gaza City.
Indeed, at one point in the video, the three soldiers step over the letters “UN” written in large dark-colored capital letters on the rooftop floor.
But Touma declined to say which of the more than 180 schools the agency operates in the Gaza Strip is shown in the video. She also said it was unclear when the flag was raised or whether or not it’s still there.
“This is what we have for now and we don’t have more details,” Touma wrote.
Spokespersons for the Israeli government and military didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
But the video appears to have been taken from the roof of a school building at the intersection of Tariq Ibn Ziyad and Al-Naser roads, which is located about one mile from the hospital.
Satellite imagery on Google Earth shows the letters “UN” painted on the long flat roof of one building, and matches several distinctly-styled structures that are shown in the video surrounding the campus complex that includes at least four schools for boys.
For example, at the beginning of the clip, a tower with a red roof and a tall antenna on top can be seen in the upper left of the clip. That matches a building a block away on the map. Another building in front of the soldiers as they plant the flag has a unique curved facade and window on the top level, which is also visible in the satellite image.
It’s unclear who first shared the video, but Israeli journalist Hallel Bitton Rosen shared a longer, clearer version of the footage on his social media accounts on Nov. 15.
Rosen, who didn’t respond to emails seeking comment, described the clip in a post written in Hebrew as showing soldiers from the Israeli military’s Givati Brigade raising a flag atop a school.
The Givati Brigade is composed of infantry units and has a purple and white flag similar to the one flown along with the Israeli flag in the video.
On Monday, the World Health Organization evacuated 31 premature babies from Shifa hospital. They were among more than 250 critically ill or wounded patients stranded when Israeli forces laid siege to the facility earlier this month.
The Israeli military has long claimed Hamas built elaborate command centers and bunkers underneath the sprawling grounds of Shifa, justifying the siege and raid.
The United States has said its intelligence corroborated Israel’s stance, but Hamas has denied the claims.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
