Clip shows attack on Bulgarian politician, not ‘assault on Netanyahu after ICC arrest warrant issued’

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza in November, a video was shared thousands of times in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed Israel’s leader being attacked while giving a speech. The video in fact shows an attack on a Bulgarian politician in January 2013.

“International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant, Israeli PM Netanyahu attacked,” reads the simplified Chinese text overlaid on a clip shared on X on November 23, 2024.

The clip, which was viewed more than 52,000 times, shows a man being tackled to the ground and kicked after he pointed a weapon at someone speaking at a podium.

It surfaced after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’ military chief Mohammed Deif on November 21 (archived link).

The arrest warrants — which Netanyahu described as “anti-Semitic” — were issued on suspicion of “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed” in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel (archived link).

Hamas’s unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,580 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

The clip was also shared thousands of times alongside similar claims 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 in fact shows a politician who was attacked in Bulgaria in 2013.

Gas pistol attack

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

The report is about the delayed start of a court case against Oktay Enimekhmedov, who was accused of attempting to kill Bulgarian politician Ahmed Dogan.

Dogan was attacked onstage during the national conference of his party in January 2013.

Subsequent reverse image searches led to similar footage on the official YouTube account of AFP, where it was published on January 20, 2013 (archived link).

“Bulgaria: Attack on leader of Turkish minority party,” its French-language title read.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared clip (left) and the footage as it appears in AFP’s official YouTube account (right):

AFP reported that Dogan was addressing delegates of his MRF party on January 19, 2013, when his young attacker, dressed in black, pulled out the non-lethal weapon and pointed it at his head (archived link).

Visibly stunned at first, Dogan flung the attacker’s arm away before a shot could be fired.

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

Police said the man had two knives as well as the gas pistol, and experts later confirmed the gun was non-lethal.

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

Bulgaria’s Supreme Court upheld that sentence in a ruling issued in April 2015 (archived link).