Does a video on social media show the Egyptian army preparing to attack Israel in the fall of 2023? No, that's not true: The video on TikTok shows old footage that has been heavily manipulated. The original video shows the Egyptian army during military exercises, filmed years before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @sneji_levski on October 20, 2023.
The English text visible at the bottom of the video reads:
Egyptian army is ready to Attack on israel.🇪🇬🇮🇱😮
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Nov 2 08:11:21 2023 UTC)
A search of a still from the video using the Google Lens reverse image search tool (archived here), conducted on November 2, 2023, found that the same video was posted on TikTok on October 6, 2023, a day before the Hamas attack. A comparison of the two videos shows that the video posted on October 20, 2023, has undergone processing compared to the previous one. The image is flipped, which is indicated by the inverted number shown in the frame with the aircraft's tail. Such editing may hurt the reverse image search results, suggesting the video's editing was done with such intent.
An additional search on multiple frames from both videos found more results containing the claim's footage. Scenes from the claim can be seen in videos posted on May 5, 2023, on YouTube and on TikTok on June 9 (technically posted on June 8, 23:58:59 GMT), 2023. Some of the matching frames and scenes in these videos are of different lengths and arrangements, indicating that they also have undergone manipulation.
One of the earliest results of the original footage can be traced to a video on TikTok from October 10, 2022, where for example the number on the tail of the airplane can be recognized before undergoing editing and the video can be seen at full size, without being cropped or flipped. The first 16 seconds of this video, where the Mistral-Class Amphibious Assault Ship and other specific elements can be seen, match not only some parts of the TikTok video with the false claim but also footage from Egyptian Armed Forces military exercises Qadir 2020 seen here and here.
Videos with similar footage showing the Egyptian army during military exercises can be seen here and here.
