Video of people assaulting security guard in Israel viral with false claims

What's the claim?

A video showing a group of people ruthlessly beating a person has been shared on social media with the claim that it shows Israelis beating a Palestinian. Viral posts on social media carried the caption, "A group of Israeli settlers attack a Palestinian civilian for no reason other than the fact that he is Palestinian." This post has been shared against the backdrop of the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict that began on October 7, 2023.

X posts claiming that Israelis attacked a Palestinian. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found that this claim is misleading.

What's the truth?

Using a reverse image search, we found that a news report published on May 8, 2023, on the Hebrew website Bhol, carried a still from the viral video attributed to a police spokeswoman. It also carried a video of the same incident shot from another angle. The videos had multiple similarities that confirm they show the same incident. The fence used in the attack can be seen in both the videos, as can the people carrying out the attack. 

The fence and people are visible in both the viral video and the video published by Bhol. (Source: X, Bhol/Modified by Logically Facts)

The report states that a security guard at the Rashbi tomb complex in Meron named Hamud Shafi was beaten up for speaking in Arabic. The report quotes Shafi claiming that a group of people was vandalizing the area, after which another guard warned Shafi in Arabic not to intervene. This led to the group beating Shafi and his co-workers. "We were beaten, they also beat us with an iron rod and threw fences at us and more," says Shafi, who claims to belong to the Druze community in Israel. The report also mentions that Shafi had previously served in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). 

The Times of Israel and Israel National News also reported on the same incident on May 8, 2023, along with the viral footage, and identified Shafi as a Druze security guard. The Times of Israel reported that police opened an investigation into the incident and arrested two men for the beating.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Druze community is a culturally Arabic religious entity in Israel that has opted out of mainstream Arab nationalism and has served in the IDF and border police forces. Members of this community have been in high positions in the political, public, and military spheres.

The verdict

We mark this claim as misleading as the video shows an Israeli Druze security guard being attacked in May 2023 for speaking Arabic and not Israelis beating a Palestinian.