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FACT BRIEF

Did Palestinian militants or Hamas recently stage a fake funeral for propaganda purposes?

By Sarah Thompson
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NO

A video of a fake funeral resurfaced on social media with new captioning in early May 2021 when conflict between Israel and Gaza was intensifying. The 2021 post implied the video was by "Palestinian radicals."

In fact, the fake funeral depicted in this staged video was intended to be a humorous skit to demonstrate an inventive way to get around strict coronavirus curfews. Although the precise location of this video is not known, it was labeled as being in Lebanon when it was first circulated in March 2020, as the world began dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A curfew was put into effect in Jordan on March 21, 2020, as a preemptive pandemic measure. Two days later, on March 23, 2020, Roya News English, a publication from Amman, Jordan, posted the video of the fake mourners to its Facebook page.

See a full discussion of this at Lead Stories
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Deutsche Welle Report on coronavirus curfew in Jordan (in Arabic)
Facebook Roya News English - Fake funeral! People still breaching the law despite the warnings
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lead Stories
Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.