00:03You're watching Euronews' fact-checking show The Cube.
00:06Ahead of France's annual Bastille Day celebrations on the 14th of July,
00:11this 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
00:21which researchers have linked to the pro-Russian Storm 1516 disinformation campaign.
00:27European journalists and news outlets have been impersonated
00:30to 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
00:39whose face has the French flag painted on it.
00:41The men threaten to shed blood on the 14th of July in Paris
00:45if the government continues to supply weapons to the Zionist regime,
00:48in an apparent reference to Israel.
00:50The clip first spread on Telegram before moving to X and Facebook,
00:54gaining almost 1 million views across X posts.
00:57In the content we analyze, the men don't make an explicit reference to the group they belong to,
01:02but social media posts refer to them as Hezbollah,
01:04a Lebanese militia backed by Iran.
01:07Hezbollah's military wing is classified as a terrorist organization 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,
01:23but not a Lebanese Arabic accent,
01:26and added that the speaker also made multiple grammatical mistakes.
01:29Additionally, Hezbollah typically incorporates its own logos into videos shared on its channels,
01:35but this isn't the case here.
01:36The video bears similarities to others connected to Storm 1516, such as this one,
01:41which impersonates an Islamist militant group threatening to burn down Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral.
01:48This was also linked to the pro-Russian group,
01:50which has a track record of fabricating evidence,
01:53especially in the run-up to major events.
01:55Thank you.
01:57Thank you.
01:58Thank you.
01:59Thank you.
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