Video does not show an Israeli soldier shooting Palestinians’ water tanks

Context

On social media, a video is circulating with claims that it shows an Israeli soldier firing at water tanks of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. 

The video is captioned in Arabic and English and shows two Israeli soldiers sitting at a roadside checkpoint. According to the captions, one soldier asks the other if he can hit a water tank up the road. The other soldier points his rifle as the camera pans up the road, and two shots are heard as a white car passes. The soldiers then laugh, one of them seemingly saying, “Now they’ve got no water.” 

The video and claims were shared on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X, and was even picked up by some Arabic and Middle East-focused news outlets. 

However, the video does not show Israeli soldiers firing at water tanks. The video was made jokingly, and the shooting heard is not real shooting, but a sound effect added in editing. 

In fact 

Several of the videos circulating online include the tag of the Instagram account “aobaidaat.” The account belongs to a journalist from Jerusalem named Ali Nasr Obaidat, according to the bio. The video was uploaded to the account on March 29. However, part of the video is blurred out, suggesting this is not the original. 

Logically Facts contacted Obaidat and asked where he’d found the video. He replied with a screenshot of the video on TikTok with a TikTok username visible. We found the account matching the username. Here too the video was uploaded on March 29, 2023, but the part that was blurred out in the Instagram video here shows a video title, and the video doesn’t have subtitles. 

The account bio says in Hebrew, “After so much time in the reserves if we don't laugh we will cry,” suggesting the account is of a humorous nature.

The description of the video reads in Hebrew, “To be clear, this is not a real shooting.” Upon closer inspection, we see that the soldier holding the rifle does not touch the trigger at any point in the video. The camera pans away from him as the shots are heard, so he could have pressed the trigger while out of frame. 

As far as can be seen in the video, the soldier’s finger does not touch the trigger. (Source: TikTok/Screenshots)

From the video details, we see that the video includes an audio sound effect called “The sound of shooting with a pistol (945642) - S_R.” A search on TikTok shows that several other videos include this sound effect.

The sound effect heard in the video appears to be used in several other TikTok videos as well. (Source: TikTok/Screenshots). 

Several days after the video was uploaded, another video appeared on the same TikTok account, allegedly using the same sound effect. This video shows one soldier purportedly shooting a soft drink can out of the hand of another. The video has a similar description to the other one (in Hebrew): “For the avoidance of doubt, no real shooting took place, sound added in editing.”

We compared the sound effect used in the two videos of Israeli soldiers to another video purportedly using the same sound effect, one in Japanese of a child pretend-shooting his white Pomeranian puppy. This video was uploaded on September 1, 2023, and so could not have gotten the sound from the other two videos if the shooting here had been real. 

The sound of shooting heard in the three videos appears to be the same. (Source: TikTok)

Comparing the audio wavelengths from the point that the shots are heard in each of the three videos, we see that the sound is close to identical, suggesting the same sound effect was added in all three videos.

Comparing the audio of the three videos shows the shot sound to be identical. (Source: Logically Facts)

We contacted the Israeli soldier running the TikTok account, and he sent us the original video file. Here, no shooting is heard.

No shooting sound is heard in the original video as the white car passes. (Source: avrr101)

Logically Facts asked the TikTok user to explain the joke of the video. He said it referred to an incident where the settlement that the soldiers protect came under fire from the nearby villages. "On one occasion a boiler that is used to heat water for one of the residents was hit, and as a reminder of this incident the soldiers made a joke on TikTok," he explained.  

The verdict

In the original video file, no shooting is heard. The user who uploaded the video has made clear that no shooting took place and that the shots heard are a sound effect added in editing. This is supported by the exact same sound effect appearing in other videos. The TikTok account’s bio suggests the videos uploaded there are of a humorous nature. Therefore, we have marked claims that the video shows Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinians’ water tanks as false.