As France prepared a massive security operation to protect the Olympic Games, a video purporting to depict Hamas threatening to attack Paris circulated on social media. But the Palestinian militant group has denied creating the clip, the French Interior Ministry said it was not able to verify its authenticity and experts say it appears to be part of a disinformation campaign.
“Islamist releases a video threatening the Paris Olympics,” says the caption of a July 23, 2024 Instagram video.
The clip depicts a person wearing a keffiyeh covering their face and a top decorated with the Palestinian flag speaking in Arabic. English subtitles indicate the speaker is threatening “rivers of blood” over the presence of Israeli athletes at the 2024 Olympic Games and denouncing French support for the nation in its war against Hamas.
In the days before the July 26 opening ceremony, posts sharing different versions of the video spread across Instagram, X, Facebook and other websites with captions in multiple languages, including French, Portuguese and Spanish.
French security forces are on their highest alert to prevent terror attacks spoiling the start of the first Olympics in Paris in 100 years, and Israel has warned of potential threats from Iran-backed groups against Israeli athletes and tourists. But many were quick to question the authenticity of the video, pointing out Arabic mistakes and that accounts sharing it appear to be affiliated with pro-Russian networks instead of Hamas.
“The French secret services and their partners have not been able to authenticate the veracity of this video,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said July 24.
Hamas has denied responsibility for the video, according to the jihadist threat analysis group SITE (archived here). The threat monitor quoted senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq, based in Qatar, as saying: “This fabricated video is part of Zionist propaganda to incite against the Palestinian resistance.”
‘False flag’
Darmanin said the bulk of those sharing the video “were either pro-Kremlin or pro-Russian accounts.” However, he declined to attribute them to the Russian state itself, saying the posts could have come from a “sphere that might want to spread disinformation (against) our country.”
Moscow has denied being involved in this type of operation.
Foreign interference researcher David Colon said in a French post on X (archived here and here) that one of the most widely viewed posts sharing the video comes from the pro-Russian account @aussiecossack.
A security source who asked not to be named told AFP: “The first analyses point to a Russian operation under a ‘false flag’ due to a bundle of clues.”
A “false flag” attack is a war ruse in which attackers operate under fake or indistinct identities to deceive opponents and potentially trigger an escalation of conflict.
One of the first accounts to post the video on X was @endzionism24. The now-suspended page was created in February but remained silent for several months.
It began sharing content a few days before the video was posted, a typical pattern for inauthentic accounts that spread disinformation. Many of the posts were anti-Israel.
“The video was then reposted on X by accounts known to be part of Russian networks and was relayed by African sites known to be relay points for Russians,” the security source said.
Along with physical security around the Games, authorities are concerned about cyber attacks and disinformation. France in particular is a target given its support of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.
Inconsistent language and signs
An Arabic-speaking AFP journalist said the man in the video makes multiple grammar and syntax mistakes. Many online have criticized his pronunciation of “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) at the end of the clip.
Another security source told AFP “the visual codes of Hamas propaganda are absent” in the video.
Hamas militants killed 1,197 people in Israel in its October 7, 2023 attack — most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still being held in the Gaza Strip, 39 of whom the military says are dead.
Since the war began, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians according to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
According to the Israeli military, 327 soldiers have been killed in the Gaza military campaign since the start of the ground offensive October 27.
A Palestinian demand that Israel be barred from the Paris Games over the war in Gaza was rejected by the head of the International Olympic Committee and French President Emmanuel Macron. Athletes from both delegations participated in the July 26 opening ceremonies.
Read more of AFP’s reporting on misinformation surrounding the Olympics here.
July 26, 2024 This article was updated to swap a reference link in paragraph 8.