00:03You're watching Euronews' fact-checking show The Cube.
00:06Ahead of France's annual Bastide celebrations on 14th July, this video surfaced on social media,
00:13allegedly showing Hezbollah militants who threatened to carry out attacks on French soil.
00:18But in reality, it actually fits into a series of videos which researchers have linked to the pro-Russian Storm
00:241516 disinformation campaign.
00:27European journalists and news outlets have been impersonated to push fabricated claims about the West and Ukraine.
00:34In this particular clip, 300 men pose in front of a dummy of a French Foreign Legion soldier, whose face
00:40has the French flag painted on it.
00:41The men threaten to shed blood on 14th July in Paris if the government continues to supply weapons to the
00:47Zionist regime, in an apparent reference to Israel.
00:50The clip first spread on Telegram before moving to X and Facebook, gaining almost 1 million views across X posts.
00:57In the content we analysed, the men don't make an explicit reference to the group they belong to, but social
01:02media posts refer to them as Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran.
01:07Hezbollah's military wing is classified as a terrorist organisation by the EU.
01:11The arm patch on the soldier's uniform also resembles the group's.
01:16Nevertheless, there are multiple clues that the video is fake.
01:18Our Arabic-speaking colleagues told us that the accent resembled Levantine Arabic, but not a Lebanese Arabic accent, and added
01:26that the speaker also made multiple grammatical mistakes.
01:29Additionally, Hezbollah typically incorporates its own logos into videos shared on its channels, but this isn't the case here.
01:36The video bears similarities to others connected to Storm 1516, such as this one, which impersonates an Islamist militant group
01:44threatening to burn down Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral.
01:48This was also linked to the pro-Russian group, which has a track record of fabricating evidence, especially in the
01:54run-up to major events.
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