Pro-Hamas chant misinterpreted as a call to 'spill more Jewish blood'

Context

Fighting between Israel and Hamas resumed on the morning of December 1, ending a seven-day truce that saw both sides freeing and exchanging hostages and prisoners. According to a report by The New York Times, Israel released a total of 240 prisoners and detainees in exchange for 105 captives freed by Hamas during the temporary ceasefire.

Following the release of these hostages and prisoners, several videos of celebrations and crowds have been shared on social media. France 24 reported that people celebrating the release of prisoners from Israeli jails waved flags of various Palestinian movements, including that of Hamas. 

Against this backdrop, a video of a woman is going viral on social media with the claim that after being released from jail, the female prisoner called for “Hamas to spill more Jewish blood.” An X (formerly Twitter) user shared the claim (archived here) in a post that had been viewed over 22 million times at the time of publishing. In the video, the woman, identified as Roda Abu Agamiya in another post by the same X user, can be heard raising a chant in Arabic, which is then repeated by those around her. 

In Fact

The chant raised in the video by the woman is in support of a Hamas leader and is not a call for the spilling of Jewish blood. Logically Facts translated the Arabic chant, which says, “Put the sword against the sword, we’re the men of Mohammed Deif.” 

Some other posts on X have also suggested similar translations. One post states it translates to, “Put a sword in front of a sword we are the men of [Hamas military commander] Muhammad Deif.” (It rhymes in Arabic)”

While another post plays captions over the video and translates the chant as; “Put the sword against the sword. We are the men of Muhammad Al Deyf.” 

Therefore, the chant seems to be pro-Hamas and makes no mention of Jews or Israelis. 

A screenshot from the viral video was also carried by Israeli news outlet The Jerusalem Post in a report published on December 1. The accompanying caption read, “Freed prisoner, Roda Musa Abdelkader Abu Agamiya, chants in support of Hamas amid her release from Israeli prison. (credit: Screenshot/Israel Police).” Logically Facts could not independently verify the identity of the woman in the video.  

The chant raised by the woman is not entirely new, and several variations have existed over the years. One X post from 2022 shows a crowd chanting, “We are the men of Mohammed Deif: we are the men of Yahya Sinwar” outside the Aqsa Mosque. In 2022, The Times of Israel also reported that Palestinians on the Temple Mount chanted, “Put sword next to sword, we’re Mohammad Deif’s men.” The Israeli news outlet had labeled the chant as pro-Hamas. 

The chant refers to Mohammed Deif, the leader of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which is the military branch of Hamas. According to the BBC, Deif is one of Israel’s most wanted and is accused of the planning and supervising of bus bombings in 1996 and the killing of three Israeli soldiers in the 1990s. He has escaped several assassination attempts and escaped from prison in 2000 at the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising. Despite this, Deif has remained elusive, and only three known pictures of him exist. 

The verdict

The chant, when translated, says, “Put the sword against the sword, we’re the men of Mohammed Deif.” This is a pro-Hamas chant but does not directly advocate the spilling of ‘Jewish blood.’ Therefore, we have marked this claim as misleading.