The clip shows an attack on a Bulgarian politician, not an ‘attack on Netanyahu after the ICC warrant was issued’

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Gaza war in November, a video was shared many times on social media claiming to show an attack on Israel during his speech. The video actually shows an attack on a Bulgarian politician in January 2013.

“The International Court of Justice issued an arrest warrant, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu attacked,” read simplified Chinese text overlaid on a clip shared by X on November 23, 2024.

The clip, which has been viewed more than 52,000 times, shows a man being beaten to the ground and kicked after he pointed a weapon at someone.

Screenshot of X’s fake post, captured on December 4, 2024

This came after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif on November 21 (link saved).

Arrest warrants — which Netanyahu has described as “anti-Semitic” — have been issued for alleged “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed” in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 (link archived).

The unprecedented attack by Hamas has resulted in the death of 1,208 people, most of them civilians, according to AFP based on official data.

Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 44,580 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

The clip has been shared thousands of times and similar allegations that Netanyahu was attacked after the arrest warrant was issued on other video sharing platforms, including. Douyin and news aggregator Netease.

The video, however, is old and actually shows a politician who was attacked in Bulgaria in 2013.

Gas gun attack

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared clip led to the same video in a report published on the website of the Bulgarian private television station bTV on August 14, 2013 (archived link).

This report is about the delay in the beginning of the court case against Oktay Enimekhmedov, who was accused of trying to kill the Bulgarian politician Ahmed Dogan.

Dogan was attacked on stage during his party’s national conference in January 2013.

A subsequent reverse image search led to similar images on AFP’s official YouTube account, where they were published on January 20, 2013 (archived link).

“Bulgaria: The attack on the leader of a Turkish minority,” read its French-language headline.

Below is a comparison of a screenshot of the falsely shared clip (left) and the images as they appear on AFP’s official YouTube account (right):

AFP reported that Dogan was speaking to guests of his MRF group on January 19, 2013, when his young assailant, dressed in black, pulled a non-lethal weapon and pointed it at his head (link saved).

Appearing taken aback at first, Dogan threw the attacker’s arm away before a shot could be fired.

Both men fell to the ground in the ensuing scuffle, and a number of conference delegates rushed to the stage and kicked the assailant.

The police said that the man had two knives and a gas gun, and experts later confirmed that the gun was non-lethal.

According to a report in an English newspaper in Bulgaria The Sofia Globe as of February 2014, the attacker — Oktai Enimehmedov — was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for threatening to kill Dogan but was acquitted of attempted murder (archived link).

The Bulgarian Supreme Court upheld that sentence in a decision issued in April 2015 (link saved).