Fact Check: Video Does NOT Show ‘Muslims’ Yelling ‘Death’ To France, Jewish People, Police, Following 2024 French Election
Does a video show a group of protesters with Palestinian flags shouting offensive sentiments about France, Jewish people and the police after the 2024 French legislative election? No, that’s not true: The video predates the election. Additionally, what the people in the protest are yelling sounds like a pro-Palestinian slogan, not the death threats a social media post claims were being chanted.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on July 9, 2024. The post included a video with a caption that read:
Muslims in France celebrate the defeat of the French right by marching in the streets and chanting, ‘D*ath to France, D*ath to the Jews, D*ath to the police’
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Jul 10 15:07:29 2024 UTC)
Video is older than election
Lead Stories performed a reverse image search using Google, visible here, to attempt to find the origin of the video. The results led us to a post on X (archived here) on October 11, 2023. This proves that the video predates the 2024 French election, in which the far-right National Rally did not perform as well as initially expected. Thus, the protest is unrelated to that election’s results.
The October 2023 post on X claimed that the video was taken in Marseille, a city in France. Lead Stories looked at the stores in the background of the video to try to locate where it was taken. We noticed a sign that read “Etam,” which corresponds to the name of Etam, a lingerie chain. For the sake of narrowing down store options, we assumed that the video was actually taken in Marseille and used Google to search for Etam locations in that city. Using the Google Street View feature embedded in Google Maps, we found that the Rue Saint-Ferréol Etam location in Marseille appeared to be surrounded by the same businesses that the pro-Palestinian demonstrators were marching past in the video (archived here), such as the green flag of Yves Rocher, a cosmetics company.
Once the location was found, Lead Stories tried to determine the specific event during which this demonstration occurred. However, we could not confirm the exact date of the protest.
Protesters were not calling for ‘death’ of France, Jewish people or police
There is also no evidence that the demonstrators in the video were yelling “Death to France, Death to the Jews, Death to the police.” It more closely sounds like “Viva la Palestine.”
The user who made the post claiming the protesters yelled threatening language following the 2024 French election modified their claim in a follow-up post. In a post (archived here) made on July 10, 2024, the user admitted that those words were not used in the video but that “Maybe they were also heard saying that but it wasn’t caught on camera.” The latter portion of this statement is outside the scope of this fact check.
More Lead Stories fact checks
Lead Stories has debunked other claims related to the 2024 French legislative election here and about the 2023 conflict between Hamas and Israel here.
