Image of Lionel Messi holding Israeli and Palestinian flags altered

As celebrities respond to the conflict between Israel and Hamas on social media, some posts claim to have shared Lionel Messi Imprisoning Israelis or Palestinian flag.This is wrong; both images were modified from advertisements that predated sports memorabilia recent hostilities in the middle East.

Gad Saad, a marketing professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, shared a photo of the soccer icon holding an Israeli flag in an Oct. 31, 2023, Instagram post, saying: “Proof again He is the greatest player.” Use the abbreviation for “Greatest of All Time.”

The post received more than 1,800 likes.to similar postal His post on X (formerly Twitter) received more than 8,500 additional likes.

Other social media users shared photos of the captain of Argentina’s 2022 World Cup winning team, who now plays for Inter Miami, on social media. XTikTok and Facebook.

Meanwhile, photos of Messi allegedly holding a Palestinian flag also circulated online. X and Facebook – both in Portuguese and Spanish.

On October 24, a YouTube clip with more than 2,000 views was titled “Messi supports Palestine” Opinion.

The posts come as Israeli forces continue bombing and ground fighting in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7. Militants linked to the Palestinian Islamist movement killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took 240 hostages in the bloodiest day in the country’s 75-year history, according to Israeli officials.

Israel subsequently cut off food, water and electricity supplies to Gaza and began a relentless bombing campaign that the Hamas-controlled health ministry said had killed more than 9,000 people as of November 2. The United Nations has sounded the alarm over the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza.densely populated territory.

Many celebrities responded warthe post purporting to show photos of Messi holding Israeli and Palestinian flags included screenshots of what appeared to be his Instagram and Facebook pages.

But the photos did not appear on his official account – a reverse image search showed they were altered from a photo of Messi holding a sign promoting a partnership with sports memorabilia brand Icons.com.

this Photos of Messi holding a Palestinian flag have been distorted before and he manipulated a post on his Instagram page from May 10, 2021 (Archived) here). Other fact-checking groups debunked the claim that year.

As for the alleged photo of Messi holding an Israeli flag, a keyword search turned up another photo of him holding an Icons.com logo – this time on the company’s Facebook page on October 3, 2023 Shared (archived here).

While the background of the photo is more neutral, the wall behind Messi matches the one in the altered image.So are his clothes and the position of his hands. identical.

AFP found no evidence that Messi – Other targets of misinformation on social media ——As of November 2, information about the war between Israel and Hamas has been released.

After BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh fact-checked Concordia University’s Saad on X, the professor said in another post that he didn’t know if the image had been manipulated.

“But it’s certainly not fake. I remember it happening,” he said November 1retweeted a photo of Messi at the Western Wall, a holy place in Jerusalem where Jewish believers go to pray.

The photo was taken in 2013, when Messi and other members of his then-team FC Barcelona embarked on a “peace tour” of the region, meeting with officials from Israel and the Palestinian territories.

More AFP reports on misinformation about Israel’s war with Hamas can be found here.