By Archis Chowdhury
An image of Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber holding the flag of Israel is being shared online to highlight his support for Israel in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
BOOM found this post to be misleading; according to our fact-check, the image has been edited to falsely show Bieber with the flag of Israel. In the original image, he can be seen holding the Brazilian flag instead.
Following Israel's offensive bombardment of Gaza, in retaliation to the October 7 attack by Hamas that led to the loss of 1,200 Israeli lives, Justin Bieber erroneously posted an image of a demolished building in Gaza with the caption, "Praying for Israel". Bieber then swiftly deleted the story, and shared another post with the same caption, but without the image. This edited post on him holding the Israeli flag has been shared in this backdrop.
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A user on X (formerly Twitter) posted the image as part of a thread calling out Bieber for his one sided support for Israel. It was shared with the caption, "He has always been on their side, he also announced he was performing there after israel started bombing Palestine in 2021."
View the post here.
Fact Check
BOOM looked through the responses to the tweet, and found several users pointing out that it is edited. Some others also suggested that the real image showed him holding a Brazilian flag.
We then performed a keyword search with "bieber brazil flag", which led us to several blogposts and articles on the singer's visit to Brazil in 2011, during which he had greeted his fans with the Brazilian flag from the hotel Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro.
One of the articles, by Brazilian TV channel Globo, contained an image of Bieber holding the Brazilian flag, which was found to be an exact match with the viral image, albeit with a different flag.
Upon comparing the two images, we were able to ascertain that the viral photo of him holding the Israeli flag has been doctored, and that it originally showed him with the Brazilian flag.
