BBC did not report that Ukraine is sending arms to Hamas, a video was fabricated
FILE - Palestinian militants from Hamas ride on a truck with their weapons during the funeral of militant Emad Abu Kados who was killed during clashes with Fatah gunmen in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, June 13, 2007. The Associated Press on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023, reported on social media posts falsely claiming that a video shows a BBC News report confirming Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas for their deadly surprise attack on Israel Saturday. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa, File)
CLAIM: A video shows a BBC News report confirming Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The widely shared video clip is fabricated. Officials with the BBC and Bellingcat, an investigative news website that is cited in the video as the source, confirm that neither outlet has reported such a claim. Experts say there is no evidence of Hamas making such a claim, either, and say there is no reason for Ukraine to arm the militant group.
THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing a bogus video to claim there’s a direct link between the wars playing out in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The clip purports to show a BBC News story about a recent report from Bellingcat on Ukraine providing arms to Hamas, the Palestinian group that launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel this past weekend.
“Bellingcat: Ukrainian military offensive failure and HAMAS attack linked,” reads the text over the video, which has more than 2,500 comments and 110,000 views on the messaging service Telegram. “The Palestinians purchased firearms, ammunition, drones and other weapons.”
The clip, which was also shared on Facebook and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, includes the BBC’s distinctive block-text logo in white along with a montage of photos and videos of soldiers, military vehicles and destroyed structures set to dramatic music.
Other posts circulating online don’t include the clip, but claim Hamas, which the U.S. and other nations consider a terrorist group, has stated outright that it received weapons from besieged Ukraine to launch its attack.
But there’s nothing to suggest either notion is true.
Neither the BBC nor Bellingcat has reported any evidence to support the notion that Ukraine funneled arms to Hamas.
“We’ve reached no such conclusions or made any such claims,” Bellingcat wrote Tuesday in a post on X that included screengrabs of the fake report. “We’d like to stress that this is a fabrication and should be treated accordingly.”
Eliot Higgins, the Amsterdam-based organization’s founder, noted the claims have been amplified by Russian social media users.
“It’s unclear if this is a Russian government disinformation campaign or a grassroots effort, but it’s 100% fake,” he wrote Tuesday in a separate post on X.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a New York University professor briefly shown near the end of the video, also disputed the clip’s suggestion that he’s said the U.S. might leave NATO if the arms claims prove true.
“Entirely fake. Never said that,” the distinguished professor of risk engineering wrote in an email Wednesday.
Spokespersons for the BBC didn’t respond to emails seeking comment Wednesday, but no such reporting can be found on the outlet’s website or social media accounts, and a reporter with the organization has confirmed it’s not real.
“The video is 100% fake. Neither BBC News nor Bellingcat have reported that,” wrote Shayan Sardarizadeh, a reporter with BBC Verify, the organization’s fact checking unit, in a post on X Tuesday
Ukrainian officials have similarly dismissed the notion that its country’s arms have somehow found their way to Hamas, whose incursion into Israel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced this week.
The country’s military intelligence agency, in a Monday post on its official Facebook page, accused Russia of plotting a disinformation campaign around these claims.
Experts say there is also no evidence of Hamas making any claims about receiving arms from Ukraine, as some of the posts claimed, nor would it make sense for Kyiv to provide them.
“I have not seen any evidence of anything remotely resembling what you described,” Shai Feldman, a professor of Israeli politics and society at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, wrote in an email Tuesday when asked about the claims.
Hamas’ official website was down as of Wednesday evening, but archived versions on Google and the Internet Archive don’t show any statements about receiving Ukrainian weapons.
“I see no reason Ukraine would do this,” said Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “Starting with the fact that Kiev is in the business of obtaining weapons and not giving them away.”
At the same time, Russian information operations have stepped up their efforts in the wake of the Hamas attack, according to Alexander Mitchell, a spokesperson for the Institute for the Study of War, which publishes daily updates on the Ukraine conflict.
He said Russians are pushing a range of false narratives to “drive a wedge in military support for Ukraine” in the West and demoralize Ukrainians.
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Associated Press reporter Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed to this story.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
