Image does not show thousands of Israelis recently leaving due to fear of war with Lebanon

Context

An image of an airport terminal filled with people standing in line is being shared on social media with claims that thousands of Israelis are fleeing the country in fear of a coming war with neighboring Lebanon. 

"Breaking: Thousands of Israelis flee through Ben Gurion Airport, fearing the outbreak of war with Lebanon,” says a post on Instagram shared on June 22. 

Hostilities between Israel and Lebanon have been growing since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza following Hamas' October 7 attack last year, with Israeli and Hezbollah forces exchanging fire across the border.

In mid-June, Israeli military reportedly approved operational plans for an offensive on southern Lebanon, causing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to warn Israel that Lebanon has weapon capabilities to strike Israel. The rhetoric led EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to reportedly express concern about the conflict spilling over into Europe, while U.N. general secretary Antonio Guterres said there was a risk the conflict could end in “catastrophe.”

However, the image in the social media posts does not show people leaving due to concerns of a wider escalation. It is from at least December 2021 and appears to have been captured during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found no evidence that people were leaving Israel by the thousands over concerns of war. 

In fact 

Through a Google reverse image search, we found that the image has been used in numerous news reports in the past few years. The earliest example we found was an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post published on December 21, 2021. Here, the image caption reads, “With more countries being declared ‘red,’ travelers converge on Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday,” suggesting the image was captured on Sunday, December 19, 2021. 

Israel banned travel to the United States, Canada, and eight other countries on December 20, 2021, due to the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. 

Looking at the image shows people wearing face masks, further strengthening that it was captured during the pandemic. 

The Jerusalem Post article credits Israeli press photo agency FLASH90 for the image. We found it in the FLASH90 database where it was uploaded on December 19, 2021. 

The Instagram post with the image credited the Instagram user Khaled Tabasha. We found the image on Tabasha's Instagram profile. The post made clear that it was an “Illustrative photo.”

Conducting keyword searches in both English and Hebrew, we could not find any reporting on Israelis recently flocking to Ben Gurion Airport to leave the country. 

When asked about the claim, Liza Dvir, the Israel Airports Authority, told Logically Facts “It's totally fake.”

Thousands of Israelis have reportedly been displaced since the start of the conflict. 

There have been multiple instances of visuals from airports misleadingly being used to claim that Israelis are fleeing the country.

An image of crowds at Ben Gurion International Airport travelling for the Jewish holiday season of Passover was claimed to show a 'mass exodus' amid tensions with Iran in April 2024. A video of travellers was claimed to show thousands of Orthodox Jews leaving Israel due to new conscription laws in March.

The verdict

The image was captured during the COVID-19 pandemic on December 19, 2021. It does not show Israelis leaving the country amid growing tensions with Lebanon. We could find no evidence that thousands of Israelis have recently left the country over concerns of escalation in the war. Therefore, we have marked this claim as misleading.