A video authentically shows five Israeli or Palestinian children being held prisoner in chicken coop cages during the Israel-Hamas war in early October 2023.
In early October 2023, online users shared a video with the claim that it showed five Israeli or Palestinian children being held hostage in chicken coop cages at the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The conflict began on Oct. 7 with Hamas launching a surprise attack on Israel by air, sea and land. As of this writing, more than 1,100 people had been killed, including children.
X user @OCanonist posted (archived) the video with the caption, “Alleged footage of Hamas keeping children in cages. Why? What purpose does this serve? Are they Israeli hostages?”
Fifteen minutes later, the user added (archived), “Correction: They are Palestinian children being held in cages by Israeli law enforcement/army officials.”
Correction:
They are Palestinian children being held in cages by Israeli law enforcement/army officials https://t.co/XBtcROmAxZ
— Orthodox Canonist (@OCanonist) October 8, 2023
The second post included a link to a YouTube video upload (archived) from January 2020. It’s unclear if this was the same video, as it has since been removed. Its video title originally read, “Palestinian Children Locked in Cages.” The description read, “Israeli Army Kidnapping Palestinian Children and throwing them in Cages, in Occupied Hebron, VIA B’TSELEM.” We contacted the human rights group B’Tselem to ask if it could shed light on this matter and will update this story if we receive a response.
Other users then claimed that the video was recorded several years before in Syria, perhaps in 2015.
Another person also repeatedly posted, “Old video. Father found his children playing inside chicken cages, so he locked it to take a funny video. Fake video.”
The latter description about the father finding his children playing in chicken cages seemed like it could well be the correct answer. After all, the man who recorded the video was laughing and the children did not seem to be crying or in great distress.
Unfortunately, no concrete evidence was provided by any users that would help to confirm the important points of the video: the who, what, when, where and why.
We knew the TikTok username visible in the clip was @user6903068251281. This account apparently no longer existed. We reached out to TikTok to find out when the account was removed.
Thankfully, the Hebrew-language research initiative FakeReporter.net on X was able to provide two screenshots – one from mobile and another from desktop – that showed the video had been posted at least four days before, meaning that it predated the war between Israel and Hamas.
Children in cages video:
We keep being asked for the original video. The Tiktok video we saw has been erased, and the link is broken. here it is: https://t.co/NfeACQngPB
We DON’T know where it came from. The only thing we know about the video is its time stamp: it was published… pic.twitter.com/1e5iO9lsiI— פייק ריפורטר | FakeReporter (@FakeReporter) October 9, 2023
There’s certainly a history of online users sharing unsourced and oftentimes dated videos and pictures during times of conflict. This war appeared to be the latest such conflict to be the victim of both misinformation and disinformation.
This story will be updated if we learn any further details about the context of the original video.