Fact-Check: Old Clip From Brazil Viral as ‘Pro-Palestine Rally in France'

The video predates the current Israel-Hamas conflict and shows football fans in São Paulo, Brazil.

The video is being falsely shared as one of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in France.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing hundreds of people gathered on the streets, with fireworks going up in the night sky, is being shared on social media.

The claim: Users are claiming that it shows a massive pro-Palestine demonstration in France, despite a blanket ban on shows of support for Palestine.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Archives of more viral claims on social media can be seen here and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video was taken before Hamas' attack on Israel

• It shows fans of the Brazilian football club Palmeiras celebrating their team reaching the semi-finals of the Copa Libertadores, a South American club football league.

How did we find out?: France banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations of all kinds in the country on 12 October, citing concerns over public safety.

• To look for more information on the video, we divided the it into multiple keyframes using Google Chrome's InVID WeVerify extension, and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

• This led us to a report by the Brazilian news organisation Estadão, which was published on 5 October, two days before the Hamas attack.

Estadão's article was published on 5 October, two days before Hamas' attack.

• The article carried a screenshot of the viral video, as well as X (formerly Twitter) posts with the same video.

• It mentioned that the video showed fans of the Brazilian football club Palmeiras celebrating before a Copa Libertadores match against Argentinian club Boca Juniors.

• The video shows fans accompanying the team bus on the way to Allianz Parque, a stadium in Brazil's São Paulo. As per Estadão, it took the bus more than one hour to cover the two-kilometre distance.

• The X posts credited the visuals to one Marcela Rafael, who is an ESPN Brasil commentator.

• We looked for Rafael's social media accounts and came across her post on the match between the Palmeiras and Boca Juniors club, which showed an image resembling the viral video in the background.

• We also came across other social media users sharing the same video on 6 October in connection to Palmeiras' match, dubbing the gathering the 'green corridor' in Portuguese, in accordance with the team's colours.

• Brazilian sports daily Lance had reported on the club's fanbase preparing a party of this kind 90 minutes before the match was scheduled to start.

• A verified YouTube channel named Amici 1914 also shared a video of the celebration from the ground.

• The match ended with Boca Juniors winning against Palmeiras in penalties, Associated Press reported, successfully advancing to the league's finals to play Brazilian club Fluminense FC.

• We could not independently verify the location of the viral video, but we can confirm that the video was taken one day before Hamas' surprise attack.

Conclusion: A video of football fans of Brazilian club Palmeiras celebrating before their team's match before the Copa Libertadores semi-final match is being falsely shared as a clip of a pro-Palestinian protest in France.

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