An old incident of an attack at Iraq’s mosque in 2008 was revived by several social media users to falsely claim that it shows how Israeli forces attacked a mosque in Palestine over the sound of Azaan.
CLAIM
The claim along with the video reads: “इजरायल बॉर्डर के पास फलस्तीन में बनी मस्जिद से अज़ान की आवाज़ से तंग आकर इस्राइली फोज ने मस्जिद के गुंबद पर गोली बारी करदी अब्दुल की बेसुरी आवाज से बचने का उत्तम उपाय।”
(Translated: Fed up with the sound of Azaan from the mosque in Palestine near the Israeli border, the Israeli Army opened fire on the mosque's dome. The best way to avoid Abdul's callous voice.)
Several social media users shared the video on Facebook and Twitter with the same claim.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We divided the video into multiple keyframes using InVid and reverse searched each frame on Yandex, which led us to an article published in 2008 that carried a snapshot as in the viral video.
The article, originally in Turkish, when translated to English mentioned, “In the footage shot in different cities of Iraq at different times, it is seen that US soldiers fired on the minarets targeted by heavy machine guns for minutes.[sic.]”
Since the article claimed that the viral video showed US soldiers attacking Iraq, we ran a relevant keyword search on YouTube and came across a video uploaded by American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore in March 2008.
The description of the video read: “Cpl. Jon M. Turner's (3/8 Kilo Company, 1st Platoon, U.S. Marine Corps) testimony on March 15th, 2008 included these two videos of Turner's squad firing on Mosques unprovoked, a violation of international law.[sic.]”
We also found a video uploaded in 2008 that carried Jon Michael Turner’s testimony in which he can be heard saying that he was in Iraq in 2006.
At 06:41 minutes, one can see similar visuals as in the viral video. “For those of you who don’t know, it is illegal to shoot into a mosque unless you were taking fire from it. There was no fire that was taken from that mosque. It was shot into because we were angry,” he added.
The video carries the logo of ‘IVAW’ which stands for ‘Iraq Veterans Against the War’ and the website carried several video links mentioning: “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan featured testimony from US veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.”
The website also mentioned that it has been renamed to ‘About Face: Veterans Against the War’ and the YouTube handle of the same had uploaded Turner’s testimony in 2012 in which one can see the aforementioned details.
Evidently, an old video from Iraq was revived to falsely claim that it shows Israeli forces attacking a mosque in Palestine.
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