Does a video of the Al-Aqsa Islamic religious complex show chanting crowds who had gathered in Jerusalem on the day of the Hamas attacks, October 7, 2023? No, that's not true: The video was originally posted on Facebook on April 17, 2023, during the observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The audio track of that video, which originally featured a call to prayer, has been replaced with a different track of a crowd chanting. The chanting audio originated from a 2021 protest in Jordan showing solidarity with Palestine.
The altered video (archived here) posted on TikTok by @aadilingar on October 7, 2023, was captioned:
Scenes from masjid al aqsa today #fyp #xyzbca #jerusalem #alqsa #qudus #palestine #🇵🇸 #freepalestine #muslim #islam #viral
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Oct 31 21:45:50 2023 UTC)
The timing of the posting of the video and the caption, which states this shows "today," suggests this scene was filmed on October 7, 2023, the day that Hamas militants staged multiple attacks across Israel. This is not true. The 48-second video (pictured below) was posted on Facebook on April 17, 2023, by Fwaz Tobasy. According to his Facebook, Tobasy is a resident of East Jerusalem who posts photographs of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestinian villages.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Oct 31 21:45:50 2023 UTC)
Tobasy's video has a musical track added over the original sound, which may include a call to prayer broadcast over a loudspeaker. The dubbed track is "Supplication," sung by Sami Yusuf. At 38 seconds in, the music track cuts off and the natural sound of the quiet crowd below can be heard. There is no chanting.
In the miscaptioned video posted on TikTok, the audio track has the sound of people chanting. The chant (translated from Arabic into English by Lead Stories staff) is:
'Here I am at your service, here I am at your service, here I am at your service, O Aqsa.'
A Google search (archived here) for the Arabic slogan "Here I am at your service, here I am at your service, here I am at your service, O Aqsa" was conducted on October 24, 2023. The results led to a pro-Palestine demonstration in Jordan (pictured below) published on YouTube on May 11, 2021, which has the exact same sound as the TikTok video.
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Tue Oct 31 23:08:04 2023 UTC)
--Lead Stories writer Sarah Thompson contributed to this report.
