It’s not true: from US Marines arriving in Israel to Palestinians staging deaths

The world of news is complex – and false stories and images are often widely shared on social media. Blasting News’s editorial team spots the most popular hoaxes and misleading information every week to help you discern truth from falsehood. Here are some of the most shared false claims of this week, of which none are legit.

Please send us tips or claims to check at this email factcheck@blastingnews.com or at this X/Twitter account @BNFactCheck. Read this page to better understand our submission guidelines.

Video of U.S. soldiers getting off of a plane was not recorded in Israel in October 2023

False claim: Social media users around the world have shared a video of uniformed U.S. military service members getting off of a plane at night, accompanied by the claim that the images show U.S.

Marines arriving in Israel in October 2023, amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Truth:

• A reverse image search shows that the video shared on social media was originally published on the U.S. Department of Defense's media distribution website on June 27, 2022.

• The video's description indicates that the footage shows soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) arriving at the Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase in Romania as part of a mission to “reinforce NATO's eastern flank and engage in multinational exercises with partners across Europe to reassure allies and deter further Russian aggression”.

Video does not show Palestinians pretending to be dead

False claim: Social media users around the world have shared a video showing bodies covered by white sheets.

During the clip, one of the bodies moves. According to the posts, the images were recorded in Gaza and are evidence that deaths are being faked by Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war.

Truth:

• A reverse image search shows that the video shared on social media was originally published on October 28, 2013 on the YouTube page of the Egypt-based news outlet El Badil.

• A translation of the video's description in Arabic indicates that the clip was recorded during a demonstration by students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo in support of the government of Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the military three months earlier.

Ukraine has not issued a stamp to honor a World War II veteran who fought in a Nazi unit

False claim: Social media users around the world have shared a claim that the Ukrainian postal service has released a commemorative stamp featuring the face of 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunko, who was part of a Nazi Army division formed by Ukrainian volunteers during the Second World War.

The posts include an alleged image of the stamp, with a barcode in the top right-hand corner and the phrase “Heroes don't die.”

Truth:

• A search on the website barcodelookup.com using the barcode that appears on the image shared in the viral posts indicates a different stamp, launched in August 2022 and named “Free. Unbreakable. Invincible.”

• The same stamp can be found on the website of the Ukrainian postal service, Ukrposhta, and makes no reference to Yaroslav Hunka.

• A search for Yaroslav Hunka's name on the Ukrposhta website doesn't find any record of a stamp honoring the World War II veteran.

• The false claim started to circulate on the web after the Canadian parliament honored Hunka in September, during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The controversy forced the speaker of the parliament Anthony Rota and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to apologize.

French courts do not consider people who got COVID-19 vaccines suicidal

False claim: Social media users in Brazil have shared a video in which a man claims that the French courts are considering people who have received COVID-19 vaccines as suicidal for choosing to take part in a “medical experiment.” The man also claims in the clip that French life insurance companies are denying payouts to beneficiaries of COVID-vaccinated people who have died, and that the same is starting to happen in the U.S.

Truth:

• A reverse image search shows that the video shared on social media was originally published on March 14, 2022 on the website of America's Frontline Doctors, an American right-wing organization known for spreading disinformation about the pandemic. According to the video's description, the man who appears in the images is dermatologist Peterson Pierre.

• America's Frontline Doctors gives as the source of the information in the video an article published on January 14, 2022 on the Athens News website, which in turn credits the information to the German website Unser Mitteleuropa. None of them, however, give details of when and how the supposed decision by the French courts took place.

• In a statement to the French fact-checking agency 20 Minutes Fake Off in January 2022, when the same claim was being shared in the country, the French Insurance Federation (FFA) informed that the viral claim was false and that “insurance contracts do not provide for exclusions related to the consequences of vaccination.”

• As for the claim that the same was beginning to happen in the United States, the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), which represents 280 life insurance companies in the U.S., made the following statement on Twitter in March 2022: “Life insurers are required by law to pay claims upon the death of the insured, regardless of the cause. Exceptions are extremely limited and do not include the use of an experimental drug. But make no mistake – the Covid vaccine is not experimental. America’s life insurers do not consider whether or not a policyholder has received a Covid vaccine when deciding to pay a claim.”

Salzburg Airport in Austria does not have a counter for people who intended to fly to Australia

False claim: Social media users around the world have shared a claim that Salzburg Airport, Austria's second largest, has a help desk for passengers who accidentally landed in the country and actually intended to fly to Australia.

Some of the posts are accompanied by an image of a large sign that reads: “Sorry, this is Austria not Australia! Need help? Please press the button.”

Truth:

• In a post on its official Facebook page on October 30, Salzburg Airport informed that both the counter and the button mentioned in the social media posts do not exist.

• According to the airport, the image shared in the posts is actually an advertisement for Commend International, an Austrian communications and security technology company.