Did the United Arab Emirates hold a military ceremony for Emirati soldiers who died fighting alongside Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza? No, that's not true: This video is from 2015. The UAE's official news agency published the original video on its YouTube channel on September 5, 2015, more than eight years before the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The claim appeared in several posts on social media, like this video (archived here), published on TikTok on November 4, 2023. It began with the text (translated from Arabic to English by Lead Stories staff):
The arrival at the funerals of the Emirati forces who participated with Israel in the ground invasion of Gaza.
This is what the post on TikTok looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed December 6 14:23:06 2023 UTC)
Other posts on Facebook have made the same claim and used the same video.
Lead Stories searched for Arabic keywords describing the video, such as "UAE Official Ceremony; Martyrs; UAE Soldiers Funeral" and were able to locate the original posting of this video.
The UAE's official news agency published the original video (archived here) on its YouTube channel on September 5, 2015. It showed the military ceremony for 45 UAE soldiers who died in an explosion at an ammunition storage in the Yemeni city of Marib while fighting as part of the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
