Posts falsely claim old videos show people celebrating Bondi Beach attack
After gunmen shot at a crowd celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 14, 2025, videos spread on social media falsely claiming they showed people in the United Kingdom and Pakistan celebrating the deadly attack. The videos predate the shooting and show a pro-Palestinian protest in Manchester in June and a fireworks display in Karachi staged after Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“After the Sydney terrorist attack, Palestinian supporters celebrated in Manchester. Is this community more dangerous than the monsters?” ” read part of the Hindi caption of a Facebook video shared on December 15.
The video shows several men whose faces are covered by kaffiyehs chanting and waving a Palestinian flag on what appears to be a train platform.
Another video shared on X the same day shows fireworks exploding above a building, watched by a crowd waving Pakistani and Palestinian flags.
His caption reads: “Pakistanis celebrate Sydney attack with Hamas flags and Palestinian chants. This is the reality of Pakistan: celebrating the deaths of innocent people.”
Screenshots of fake posts captured on December 17, 2025, with red Xs added by AFP
The videos circulated somewhere else in similar posts on Facebook and X following the Bondi Beach shooting on December 14 (archived link).
Gunmen killed 15 people and injured dozens more in the attack, which authorities said was aimed at sowing panic among the country’s Jews.
Police shot and killed one of the suspected shooters, 50-year-old Sajid Akram. His son Naveed, 24, was also shot and remained in hospital under police guard.
The videos circulating, however, predate the attack.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the first falsely shared video revealed that the same images were circulating in publication X six months before the June 8 attack (archived link).
The post was part of a thread about a protest in Manchester the day before.
A subsequent keyword search led to a YouTube video about the June 7 protest, with a banner and sign matching those briefly seen in the falsely shared video (archived link).
Comparison of screenshots of the falsely shared video (L) and the YouTube video from June 2025, with corresponding elements highlighted by AFP
A separate reverse image search using keyframes from the second falsely shared video also revealed that the same footage was previously shared in an X-rated post from October 8, 2023 (archived link).
“HAMAS victory celebration in Karachi, Pakistan. Organized by ‘Imamia Student Organization’,” reads the caption.
Comparison of screenshots of the falsely shared video (L) and the 2023 X video
The video was also released in an Urdu Facebook post on October 9, 2023, with a similar caption (archived link).
Ghazi Abbas, spokesperson for the Karachi-based student organization Imamia, told AFP the video was unrelated to the Sydney attack.
“It’s an old video” Abbas » said on December 17. “The video shows fireworks we organized in October 2023 at Numaish Chowrangi Karachi.”
The organization also released a statement on its Facebook page refuting the claims, saying the video showed a program organized “under the banner of ‘Hamas Victory Celebration'” (archived link).
Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people and sparked a devastating two-year war in Gaza (archived link).
Israeli retaliation against Gaza has killed at least 70,373 people, according to figures from the territory’s Health Ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
The AFP has debunked a series of false reports arising from the Bondi attack.
