Old Bulgarian video circulated as attack on Netanyahu
A video has recently been posted on Facebook with the claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was attacked. However, Dismislab’s verification found that the claim is false. Reports obtained from news media reveal that this is footage of the detention of a man who was about to attack a political leader in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2013.
The video was posted on October 29 from a Facebook profile. The 18-second video shows blurry footage of a brawl and scuffle involving many people inside a hall. The caption reads, “Breaking 🚨 A very dangerous attack has taken place on Netanyahu in Tel Aviv; he is believed to be seriously injured and a plane is being sent to take him to the United States.”
As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 18,000 times and shared 285 times. There have been more than 100 reactions to the video.
The video was posted with the same claim from multiple Facebook profiles (1, 2, 3), a page, and a group.
To verify the claim, a reverse image search was conducted using keyframes from the video. This led Dismislab to a 1-minute-08-second video report published on January 21, 2013, on the website of the British news outlet “The Guardian”. A match was found between the scenes from 6 seconds to 24 seconds of the report and the scenes of the circulating video.
The report reveals that this is footage of an attack on Ahmed Dogan, leader of Bulgaria’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), while he was giving a speech live on television. A young man attacked Ahmed Dogan with a gun with intent to kill. However, the video shows that, because the gunman’s weapon did not work properly, Ahmed Dogan took counter-action in self-defense. Subsequently, bodyguards secured him.
For further details, a relevant keyword search found that multiple international news outlets and news agencies (1, 2, 3, 4) had published reports on the incident at the time.
These reports reveal that on January 19, 2013, in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, police detained a man who pointed a gas pistol at Dogan, leader of the Turkish minority party, while he was giving a speech at a party conference. No shots were fired in this incident.
Meanwhile, no report of any attack or injury of the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, could be found in any international news outlet.
In other words, the video circulated with the claim that Netanyahu was attacked in Tel Aviv is false. A 13-year-old video of an unrelated incident in Bulgaria is being used to spread disinformation on social media.
