A video shared on social media shows an alleged Palestinian activist threatening to attack France at the Olympic Games.
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A widely shared video on social media showing an alleged Palestinian activist threatening to attack France at the Paris Olympics is fake and could possibly be of Russian origin, experts and security resources said Thursday.
The video was released as France prepares to hold an unprecedented opening rite along the Seine River on Friday and sporting moves that have already been underway since Wednesday.
The video, posted on social media adding X and Telegram, shows a man with his face covered by a keffiyeh shawl and only his eyes exposed, threatening the Olympic Games with “rivers of blood. “
With a Palestinian flag pinned to his forehead, the man claims that such attacks will be retaliation for what he describes as French for Israel in its war against the Palestinian militant organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the presence of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games. .
He ends up brandishing a bloody head that turns out to be Marianne’s, symbol of the French Republic.
But although the video was widely shared, many were quick to question its authenticity, pointing out that it is not in the taste of outfits like Hamas to make such videos and also wondering about the quality of the speaker’s Arabic.
“The French secret and its partners were unable to authenticate the veracity of this video,” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said late Wednesday.
– ‘False flag’ –
A safety Array, who requested anonymity, told AFP that “initial analyses point to a Russian ‘false flag’ operation”. He stated that “several clues” point to this interpretation.
In a false flag operation, attackers act under false identities or unique symptoms to lie to warring parties and bystanders and potentially cause an escalation of the conflict.
One of the first accounts to post the video on X, “@endzionism24,” now suspended, was created in February and then remained silent for several months.
It was activated days before the video was published for a percentage of content hostile to Israel, a typical trend of inauthentic accounts used for propaganda and disinformation.
The security source specifies that “the video was reposted on X through accounts known to be part of Russian networks and transmitted through African sites known to be Russian transmitters. ”
These come with “@aussiecossack,” a pro-Russian account that has more than 60,000 followers.
The guy makes serious mistakes in Arabic grammar and syntax, while his pronunciation of “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater) at the end of the video has also been widely mocked.
– ‘Our country’s disinformation’ –
Darmanin said the sites sharing the video “were either pro-Kremlin accounts or pro-Russian accounts. “
He declined to attribute this to the Russian state itself, but said it could simply come from a “sphere that needs to spread disinformation (against) our country. “
He added that this “could be a manipulation. “
According to the jihadist risk research site, Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official founded in Qatar, called the video a “Zionist propaganda montage aimed at denigrating the Palestinian resistance. “
France has prepared a large security operation to ensure the protection of the Olympic Games. Around 18,000 French infantrymen were deployed to protect the Games, in addition to the regular police.
But governments are also concerned about other threats, such as cyberattacks and disinformation, with France singled out as a specific target for its support for Ukraine in the fight against the Russian invasion.
The Hamas attack that sparked the war on October 7 killed another 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Of the other 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still detained in Gaza, of whom 39 have been killed according to the army.
At least 39,175 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli army’s campaign in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.
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