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An image going around online alleges that Italian football team Inter Milan has been waving the Palestinian flag ahead of its matches in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
The photo shows children walking past the squad, giving the players on the field a high five while brandishing the flag.
The posts on X containing the photo have captions such as “Inter Milan shows solidarity with Palestine before their game” and “Free Palestine”, clearly framing it as having been recently taken.
Ultimately, however, the image and its captions are misleading because the picture has been cropped.
A reverse image search leads us to the original, posted on Getty Images, which dates back to 23 September 2009. This means it was taken well over a decade before the attacks which sparked the Israel-Hamas war on 7 October 2023, but still during the wider Israel-Palestine conflict, which has been going on for much longer.
The Getty Images publication also shows that the photo shared online has been cropped. The original image shows both Israeli and Palestinian children from an Inter Milan camp, waving their respective flags and giving high-fives to players before a Serie A match against SSC Napoli.
A further online search reveals that this scene was part of an Inter Campus event, where children from Inter camps all over the world spent a week in Italy “for a week of sport, education and fun”, culminating in a lap of honour by each delegation before the Inter-Napoli match.
The photo resurfaced again in 2015, attached to an article reporting on a proposal by former FIFA president Sepp Blatter to host a “peace match” between Israel and Palestine. The match ultimately did not take place.
The reverse image search also shows us that this isn’t the first time that the cropped image has been shared in this misleading way. It has appeared every few months since the 7 October attacks.
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