MARY ALEXANDER • 29 FEBRUARY 2024

“After I finish Palestine, tell African gullible leaders that I’m coming for them to recolonize them.”

That’s a quote attributed to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, overlaid on a TikTok video circulating widely across social media in February 2024.*

The clip shows Netanyahu giving a speech. It begins with him saying: “After I liberate the Jewish people, I will go to Africa to liberate the black people.”

The audio then switches to a voiceover. “Video footage of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, talking about Israel’s goals for Africa in a press conference in Uganda, has many on the continent speculating what those plans and goals are,” it says.

“Will Africa be Israel’s next target after they completely dominate Palestine?”

The clip then returns to Netanyahu’s speech. He discusses Israel’s “tremendous opportunities” and how the country has used technology to solve problems in water supply and agriculture.

He then says: “We are eager to share this technology in so many fields with our African friends. We think that Israel is the best partner that the countries of Africa could have.”

The video ends with the voiceover saying: “Do you think Israel is genuinely seeking to help Africa, as stated by the prime minister? Or is there something sinister behind these amazing promises?”

The video can also be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

There’s no indication of when Netanyahu made the speech, but the video was first posted on TikTok on 16 February 2024. This was a few days after Israel indicated it would launch a full-scale ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Israel’s war on Gaza

Israel is a country in the Middle East and the world’s only Jewish state. The Gaza Strip is a small Palestinian territory wedged between Israel and the eastern Mediterranean sea.

Israel has been at war with Gaza since Hamas, which controls the territory, launched a deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. By 28 February 2024 the war had killed 29,954 Palestinians in Gaza and internally displaced 1.7 million more – roughly 75% of its population. About 1,440 Israelis have been killed in both territories.

On 13 February South Africa asked the UN’s International Court of Justice to consider whether Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah, “the last refuge for surviving people in Gaza”, would breach the court’s provisional orders in its genocide case against Israel.

But is the TikTok clip evidence that Netanyahu said “gullible” African leaders should be told Israel would be “coming for them to recolonise them” after he “finished Palestine”? And where and when did he give the speech?

Netanyahu quoting 19th-century Zionist

The footage is more than seven years old and has been edited to deceive.

Africa Check googled phrases from the clip where Netanyahu discusses water and agriculture. This led us to a full transcript of the speech on the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office website, dated 4 July 2016.

It’s headlined: “PM Netanyahu’s Statement at the African Summit”.

Netanyahu toured four East African nations in July 2016. In Uganda, he held a meeting with the leaders of seven countries in the region. The speech was given at that meeting.

The original video of the speech can be seen on the verified Prime Minister of Israel Facebook page, as well as on the Times of Israel YouTube channel.

The original and its transcript reveals that Netanyahu’s opening statement in the TikTok clip – “After I liberate the Jewish people, I will go to Africa to liberate the black people” – has been edited out of context.

The words were not his. Instead, he was quoting the 19th-century Austrian journalist Theodore Herzl, who proposed the idea of a Jewish state in 1896.

What Netanyahu actually said was:

The founder of modern Zionism, the national movement of the Jewish people, was Theodore Herzl, and he said, “After I liberate the Jewish people, I will go to Africa to help liberate the black people.”

And nowhere in the original video does the Israeli prime minister say: “After I finish Palestine, tell African gullible leaders that I’m coming for them to recolonise them.”

Netanyahu’s speech was in July 2016, not February 2024. The TikTok video is deliberately misleading and its claim is false.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Published by Africa Check on 5 March 2024

The post No, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu didn’t say he would ‘recolonise’ Africa after he ‘finished Palestine’ appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

MARY ALEXANDER • 28 FEBRUARY 2024

“France embassy is set on fire in Democratic Republic of the Congo,” reads the common caption for a TikTok video circulating on Facebook and X/Twitter since 11 February 2024.*

The 29-second clip shows a crowd of people shouting and throwing stones in the street outside a building with a steel gate and high wall topped with blade wire. Smoke rises.

From the 15-second mark, the words “AMBASSADE DE FRANCE” – French for “embassy of France” – can be seen etched into the wall below three light sconces.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, is roughly the size of western Europe. Rich in minerals such as cobalt and copper, it has a long history of conflict and is among the five poorest nations in the world.

Since 1996 an undeclared war led by the M23 rebel group has claimed an estimated 6 million lives in eastern DRC, particularly in the province of North Kivu on the border with Rwanda.

M23 has more recently seized huge swathes of North Kivu and encircled Goma, the province’s capital. The DRC government, the United Nations and the US have accused Rwanda of supporting the rebel group.

In early February 2024 protests erupted outside US, UK and French embassies in Kinshasa, the DRC’s capital. The protestors were demanding that western diplomats either leave or take action against Rwanda for its role in the conflict.

The video’s captions include comments such as:

• I told you the wind of change is sweeping against France in Africa. Watch the space more anger is rising.
• The world is DONE with western imperialism and interventionism.

The claim can also be seen here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

But does the clip really show the French embassy burning during the protests in Kinshasa?

Flags burned, schools closed – but no mention of embassy on fire

Africa Check compared the clip to photos (here, here, here and here) and videos (here and here) of the outside of the embassy.

Its steel gate, blade wire-topped wall and the words “AMBASSADE DE FRANCE” below three light sconces on the wall all show that the scene was filmed outside the Embassy of France complex on Colonel Mondjiba Avenue in Kinshasa.

The video was first posted online on 10 February by the TikTok user @buzz_2kin.

But here there’s no mention of the embassy being on fire. Instead, a machine translation of the post’s French description simply reads: “Total disorder at the French embassy due to war in Goma.” A similar description is overlaid on the video.

And a closer look at the original video reveals that the smoke comes from a pile of burning tyres on the pavement outside the embassy gate. No part of the complex itself – the wall or the buildings behind it – is on fire.

The protests were widely covered by news media across the world from 12 February, the day after the claim about the video first appeared online.

The reports include details: US and Belgian flags were burned, tear gas was used to disperse protestors, international schools were closed and security was stepped up at western embassies in Kinshasa.

But there was no report that the French embassy was set on fire. The claim is false.

* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.

Published by Africa Check on 4 March 2024

The post No, French embassy in DR Congo not ‘set on fire’ during protests – video shows burning tyres appeared first on South Africa Gateway.