Purported recent picture of Israeli flag on Eiffel Tower is over 6 months old

The picture can in fact be traced back to October 2023

Apr 22, 2024

CLAIM

A post including a photo on X claims to show the Eiffel Tower lit up like the Israeli flag on April 13, 2024.

BACKGROUND

A post on X was published on the account of Dr Eli David on April 14, 2024, showing a picture of the Eiffel Tower lit up in blue and white and bearing a projection of a white Star of David.

Alongside the picture, the uploader wrote to his 587,000 followers, “Eiffel tower last night Thank you”, including a number of emojis: a French flag, a red heart, and an Israeli flag.

The uploader describes himself in his bio as a “Researcher, Lecturer, Entrepreneur & Investor”. His account frequently publishes pro-Israel content and commentary and criticism of pro-Palestine protests.

In mid-April, his account was one of dozens that posted about the Israeli flag purportedly being projected onto the famous Parisian landmark the night before.

METHOD

A reverse image search of the picture brings up multiple uses of the same photograph prior to April 13-14.

Some of them claim to show the Eiffel Tower at various points in the week or weeks prior, and appear to have popped up around the time Israelis were marking six months since the October 7 attack and the subsequent war that followed.

The account dedicated to the French diplomatic mission in Israel, @franceenisrael, published the image of the Eiffel Tower on April 7 with the caption: “6 months, and it feels like it was yesterday. Tribute to the victims of the largest anti-Semitic massacre of our century.”

The official French account did not give any information about the image or when it was taken, and it was actually flagged by X as media that was “presented out of context”.

The picture can in fact be traced back to October 2023, when the Israeli flag was projected onto the Eiffel Tower in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

The picture was published to the official social media accounts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France on October 9.

News reports from the same date confirm this. AFP and other news outlets published footage of the illuminated Eiffel Tower on October 9.

From this analysis, we can confirm the recent resurgence of this image shows it being used out of context and misrepresented with the claim that the show of solidarity took place in April 2024.