Video shows crime scene reconstruction in Tehran, not 'Iran parading Israeli spies'
The video, comprising two short clips appearing to show people in prison garb escorted down a street and someone being hanged, was shared on Weibo on July 2, 2025 by Chinese newspaper Reference News.
Simplified-Chinese text superimposed on the video reads: "Iran executes Mossad spies. Before the execution, they were paraded on the streets in handcuffs and shackles."
It has been viewed over 152,000 times.
The clip's caption adds that the video was originally shared by Iranian news anchor Sahar Emami on July 1 -- though an archive of the post shows it was in fact published by a "commentary account" impersonating the TV presenter (archived link). The impostor account has since been suspended.
Similar posts were also shared in multiple languages on Threads, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
They surfaced after Iran and Israel exchanged fire in June, which left more than 1,000 people dead in Iran and 29 in Israel (archived link). A ceasefire announced by the United States has been in place since June 24.
Activists warned that Iranian authorities had unleashed a "wave of repression" following the war, accusing the Islamic republic of using fear to compensate for weaknesses revealed by the conflict (archived link).
The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights said six men had been hanged on charges of spying for Israel since the start of the conflict on June 13.
The video circulating online, however, does not show "spies" paraded through Iran.
Crime scene reconstruction
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the first falsely shared clip led to the same footage posted on Instagram on March 27 (archived link).
Its Persian-language caption indicates it was filmed where a university student was murdered in Tehran .
Subsequent keyword searches led to a similar video published by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) with a title saying it shows a crime scene reconstruction with the suspect (archived link).
AFP reported that the murder of Amir Mohammad Khaleghi, a 19-year-old business student at Tehran University, sparked outrage and student protests for better security on campus (archived link).
According to local media reports, Khaleghi was killed by robbers near the university's dormitory on February 12.
News website Iran Front Page reported on February 20 that police reconstructed the crime scene with the murder suspects in the presence of court and law enforcement officials and forensics experts (archived link).
"The reconstruction aims to provide a clearer understanding of the events and assist in completing the investigation," the report said.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency also reported on the reconstruction (archived link).
The false clip was earlier debunked by the Arab fact-checking platform Misbar (archived link).
Backstage footage
The second falsely shared clip has also previously been debunked by AFP.
A reverse image search led to longer footage published on YouTube on April 16, 2024, titled "Hanging the actor backstage" (archived link).
The full clip shows the actor raising his head after the scene.
Another version of the clip was shared on Instagram on January 3, 2025 with the caption, "Behind the scenes of the execution of the Bi Badan film" (archived link).
The entertainment database IMDb says the 2024 Farsi-language film is an adaptation of a famous criminal case in the 1990s "which went back and forth several times until the execution stage" (archived link).
The execution scene can be seen from a different angle between the movie's four to five-minute marks, an AFP journalist found.
The Iran-Israel war triggered a wave of misinformation, some of which AFP has debunked here.
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NBC News
13 minutes ago
- NBC News
Starvation in Gaza divides many Jewish Americans
Heartbreaking images of children starving in Gaza have caused what some Jewish Americans call a 'rupture' between supporters of Israel's offensive in its current form and those who oppose how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's government is managing the war. Frustrated by the bloodshed, pressure is mounting on the United States and the international community to take better control of chaotic food distribution sites. 'We're seeing not only divisiveness, but hatred between us, and that's not a good thing for the future,' said Rabbi Erez Sherman of Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles. 'So how do we not solve it? How do we work on that?' But support for Israel remains ironclad among many American Jewish groups and rabbis, who argue that Hamas is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching innocent civilians. 'Israel has facilitated an extraordinary amount of aid to Palestinians in Gaza, in wartime, and that's really an unprecedented situation,' said Belle Etra Yoeli, spokesperson for the American Jewish Committee, which recently ran a full-page ad in The New York Times with the image of an Israeli hostage who remains in Hamas custody. 'The Palestinian civilians who have been caught in the crossfire throughout this entire war because of Hamas' actions should not be suffering,' she added. 'Israel doesn't want that.' Nearly 1,400 people have been killed and more than 4,000 have been injured seeking food in Gaza, the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week. At least 859 people have been killed near sites operated by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, a controversial American- and Israeli-backed organization, the United Nations said. The foundation's executive director, Johnnie Moore, said Hamas is largely responsible for the killings and dismissed news reports about people dying by Israeli gunfire. 'We have not seen the Israeli military do anything that remotely aligns with some of these accusations,' he said. 'It is a quite evident fact that Hamas has killed intentionally probably hundreds of people in proximity not to just our sites, to U.N. distribution sites, as a means of sort of misattributing those attacks either to the IDF or to being in proximity to GHF,' he added, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. To address escalating concerns over the humanitarian crisis, synagogues across Jewish movements in the United States have organized roundtables with the executive director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. At an event with GHF hosted last month by Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, reactions were mixed, according to Sherman, the rabbi, who led the discussion. Some people were shocked that an organization that has come under so much criticism was allowed to present its case. Others appreciated hearing directly from people on the ground. 'How do you block evil from your midst while also feeding the hungry and supporting the orphan and widow?' Sherman said after the roundtable, referring to Psalm 146. 'To me, it's an impossible task, and I give credit to somebody who is at least trying to do that.' Polling suggests Jewish Americans are divided over Netanyahu's handling of the war. According to a Pew Research Center report, 53% of Jewish Americans say they lack confidence in his leadership, while 45% say they have confidence. About 6 million Jews live in the United States, or 2% of the population, according to the Pew Research Center. The poll was conducted in April, before GHF began its operations in Gaza. Supporters of Netanyahu's government, including several Jewish American organizations, have said Hamas is spreading misleading information about who is to blame for ongoing violence at aid sites, a claim Hamas has repeatedly denied. They have also criticized detractors for losing focus on the remaining Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas. 'All of this can just be stopped anytime if Hamas puts down its weapons,' said Orthodox Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization that supports Netanyahu's government. An emerging concern echoed by several organizations and rabbis is that Netanyahu's position is not creating a safer Israel or global environment for Jewish people. Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of nonprofit advocacy organization J Street, said the ongoing violence is exposing Israelis and Palestinians to unnecessary bloodshed. J Street, which supports a two-state solution, opposed Netanyahu years before the war. 'If you say to people you must be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel, then we're condemning ourselves and our kids to a never-ending conflict,' Ben-Ami said Monday. But according to Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari of Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Philadelphia, the war is creating an 'existential rupture' that is pitting friends and family members against one another. 'It's catastrophic,' he said. 'We're wrestling with the very question 'Do we belong to each other?'' Fornari was among more than 40 people arrested outside Trump Tower in New York City earlier this month as they shouted for the United States to stop arming Israel and feed Gaza. He was arrested for investigation of blocking traffic and obstruction, his third arrest since the war started on Oct. 7, 2023, he said. Some posters and signs displayed outside Trump Tower referred to an ancient maxim about the moral obligation to speak out against injustice, Fornari said. 'It says anyone who has the power to speak out and chooses not to do so is responsible for it,' he said. Handcuffed near Fornari was Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the CEO of T'ruah, a rabbinic human rights organization. Jacobs said she supported Israel's military response to Hamas' terrorist attack in 2023, which killed 1,200 people and led to the taking of 250 hostages. The strike, the worst one-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust, shocked the world. Since then, more than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and much of the territory has been destroyed. Jacobs began questioning Netanyahu's strategy as more and more civilians in Gaza were killed, she said. In July, she denounced American Jewish leaders who had not spoken out against the humanitarian crisis unfolding thousands of miles away. 'Privately, Jewish lay leaders are anguished over Gaza. Publicly, they fear being labeled antisemitic,' she wrote in an opinion column in The Forward, a Jewish American newspaper. Jacobs has been called antisemitic by other Jewish people who support Netanyahu and shunned by legacy Jewish organizations, she said. Some of it, she said, comes from a legitimate fear of prejudice. In May, two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and a Colorado pro-Israeli hostages group was attacked with two Molotov cocktails in June. There have also been reports of anti-Jewish slurs and signs at college campuses and pro-Palestinian protests across the country. The cultural fallout has been playing out in living rooms and across kitchen tables. Sonya Meyerson-Knox, a spokesperson for the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, which has opposed the war since 2023, said a member was uninvited to Shabbat family dinners because of differing opinions about the war. The group was suspended from several campuses, including Columbia University's, over allegations it intimidated Jewish students and made them feel unsafe during pro-Palestinian protests last year. Jewish Voice for Peace maintains that its views are not antisemitic. 'It is not unique in Jewish history for Jews to be in fierce disagreement with each other,' she said. 'What is unique is that there seems to be an effort to weaponize one-half of our community against the other.'
The Intercept
an hour ago
- The Intercept
Anas al-Sharif Was My Friend. Here's Why Israel Feared Him So Much.
Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif reports near the Arab Ahli Hospital in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10, 2024. Photo: AFP via Getty Images Ali Ghanim is the pseudonym of a Palestinian journalist living in the U.S. I first met Anas Al-Sharif in in November 2023 at the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, which was the biggest complex in the war-torn Gaza City. Israel had just ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza, a first step toward depopulating the area during an earlier stage of the genocide. Anas was lying on the floor in front of the emergency room with tears in his eyes. 'Why are you so sad?' I asked him sardonically. 'We're still at the beginning of this movie!' He laughed. Anas felt the weight of the war heavily, but he was still from Gaza, and we have our trademarked Ghazawi way of lighthearted humor in the face the most unfathomable loss and unbearably dark days. Above all, Israel fears the people who tell the world about what is happening in Gaza. 'You're right,' he responded. 'The climax, the real tragedy, the end of the story, are still on the way.' For Anas, the end would come too soon. On Monday, Anas, 28, was targeted, along with three other Al Jazeera journalists, in an Israeli strike on a tent complex around Al-Shifa Hospital. The Israeli government mocked him in death — even accusing him of being a Hamas operative. It's their way of belittling Anas because he did something so small as tell our story. Israel fears so many simple facets of Palestinian life, a child wearing a keffiyeh or a mother telling her son to fight for Palestine. Above all, though, Israel fears the people who tell the world about what is happening in Gaza — the war, the genocide, the famine. Anas made it a mission to tell these stories, our stories, all over the world. And people listened. For me, though, Anas wasn't just a star journalist. He shepherded me through tough times, encouraged me to do reporting, and shared his knowledge freely. Along with my father, Anas's strength was the biggest inspiration to my life. It helped keep me going. He was a mentor and, moreover, a friend. In the hospital that day we met, we chatted for a couple hours. We both grew up in Jabaliya refugee camp. He knew some of my relatives. It was Israel's occupation that inspired him to become a journalist. Anas told me once about how, when he was still young, one of his relatives had been arrested. When the relative returned from Israeli prisons, Anas listened intently as the man narrated tales from behind bars for his family. Those were the kinds of stories — of injustice, of torture, of indignity — that needed to be told to the wider world, Anas realized. Palestinian communities are famously tight-knit, but it was especially true in our camp, where people felt each other's needs and wants intensely. In the camp, people supported each other at any cost. Anas was known for being close to the children in his community, connecting with them and instilling pride in them by teaching them about Palestine. The spirit of telling people's stories while also supporting them as human beings was ever present in his work. Anas could be seen walking through a hospital at work, microphone in hand, but pausing to express sympathy for mothers who had lost their sons. We would both come to know tremendous loss in this war. Anas's father was killed by Israel in an airstrike a month after our meeting. And my family home was hit by an airstrike on our densely populated neighborhood shortly before we encountered each other; my mother had been killed, and my sister landed in the intensive care unit of Al-Shifa Hospital, part of the reason I was there that day. We were also, for the meantime, stuck. Israel was besieging the hospital. It was an affront to international norms, and Israel justified its attack with bogus propaganda about militants hiding out in tunnels beneath the complex. We spent a lot of time together during the offensive and formed a bond that would continue until the day Anas died. Anas pushed me further into journalism — and once I was getting my feet under me, he pushed me to keep going. When we had met at the hospital, I'd already been taking photos. Every morning, I'd put on my nearly five-pound press vest and sprint from massacre to massacre. Darting around Gaza City, I took pictures with one hand because my other arm was severely injured in the attack that killed my family members. 'I see you're working with one hand,' Anas said at the hospital, and I told him my story. At the time, I had mostly been posting to social media. Anas, though, was an official journalist with Al Jazeera. He began to show me the ropes, patiently answering any questions I might have had and telling me how to interact with editors abroad. This was a crucial part of the job for Anas: His journalism came first, but he knew that our stories needed to reach the world outside Gaza if there was any hope of international intervention to stop the genocide. We had to give a voice to our fellow Palestinians. His journalism came first, but he knew that our stories needed to reach the world outside Gaza. He knew it was dangerous work, but it was worth it. When I worried about a dangerous outing, Anas told me about the value of risking your life for silenced people — how if we didn't do it, those voices may never get heard. He also, however, understood that sometimes people needed to move on. I hadn't been able to leave the hospital because I was with my ailing sister, but during the siege, the lack of power brought her life support down and she succumbed to her injuries. It was time to go south and reconnect with my father. Anas understood and urged me to go — but to keep working. He told me, 'Don't forget you survived the bombardment of your house for a reason, and you need to continue.' I wondered about him. Why was he staying in such a dangerous place? He answered that his people were still there in the north and he would stay with them. Eventually, I had to leave the Gaza Strip to get medical care for my injured arm and was lucky enough to get out. I ended up in the U.S. I began pursuing a degree but continued to do journalism work. And, through WhatsApp, Anas continued to be there for me — just as he was for his colleagues who were in Gaza. I was very close with one of Anas's colleagues at Al Jazeera, Fadi al-Wahidi. Last October, al-Wahidi was behind the camera in Jabaliya, within an area Israel had labeled a 'yellow' zone — not in a forbidden 'red' zone — when gunfire broke out. He was hit in the neck and paralyzed. A few months ago, Anas began leading the charge to get his colleague evacuated to Qatar. He activated a network of contacts to prod international organizations. It would turn out to be a long fight and Anas wouldn't see it to its conclusion. His own work, too, was becoming more difficult. Israel's targeting of journalists has made the genocide the deadliest war for the press in history. Anas himself had received explicit threats. 'I feel tired,' he told me a few days before he was killed. Even as he had encouraged me to leave, however, and worked to get colleagues evacuated, he had resolved to stay, to never give up. He said, 'This is my land and this is my reality.' We had been speaking for a story I am working on. Anas had, in his usual generous way, agreed to help me find sources. We set up a meeting for 5 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S. — late at night for Anas, when little would be going on. I messaged him at the appointed time, but no response came. I sat and waited, a pit in my stomach. I opened Instagram, something I had been seeking to do less of. Immediately, I saw the news about Anas. Without thinking, reacting on instinct, I threw my phone across the room. Anas spent so much of his life making sure other people's stories were heard. When I got the news, however, my voice didn't produce any words. All I could do was scream.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Netanyahu calls on Iranian people to rebel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people directly in a video message on Tuesday, urging them to rebel against the leadership in Tehran. He called on the people in Iran to "be bold and brave - to dare to dream." "Take to the streets, demand justice, demand accountability, protest tyranny," said the Israeli premier. "Build a better future for your families and for all Iranians. Do not let these fanatic mullahs ruin your lives for a minute longer." Conflict between arch-enemies continues despite ceasefire In June, Israel waged war against Iran for 12 days and, together with the US, bombed key nuclear facilities. In addition to attacks on military targets, Israel also killed at least 10 nuclear scientists to sabotage the country's nuclear programme. "Your leaders forced a 12-day war on us and they lost miserably," Netanyahu said. The fundamental conflict between the arch-enemies persists despite the ceasefire – and a diplomatic solution is not in sight. Iran's leadership responded domestically after the war with a wave of repression. "Time to fight for freedom" Regarding the recent water crisis in Iran, Netanyahu said, "Everything is collapsing. In this brutal summer heat, you don't even have clean, cold water to give your children." In contrast, he said, Israel is the "number one recycler of water in the world." If the current leadership in Tehran were overthrown, Israel would flood Iran with experts, he said. "We will help Iran recycle water, we will help Iran desalinate water." Netanyahu said, "Now is the time to fight for freedom." The Israeli prime minister is facing strong opposition in his own country, with weekly demonstrations where he is repeatedly called a dictator. Solve the daily Crossword
