BERLIN — A video of a huge Palestinian flag flying from a tall flagpole, with a climber in harness hanging from the mast and a crowd watching from the street below, is spreading across social media with a dramatic caption: as soon as a new government was formed in Israel, the Palestinian flag was hoisted there. Both halves of the claim are wrong.

The footage is real, but it was not filmed in Israel — and no new Israeli government had been formed when the video spread.

What the video actually shows

Reverse-image searches of keyframes from the viral clip lead to a Ynet Global report published on 8 November, and to matching coverage in the German press. The scene is the Platz der Republik in Berlin, outside the Reichstag building that houses the Bundestag, Germany's parliament — not the Knesset in Jerusalem.

On Sunday 8 November, at around 11:15 in the morning, a 22-year-old activist climbed the roughly 30-metre flagpole in front of the Reichstag, took down the German Flag of Unity — the banner that symbolises Germany's 1990 reunification — and hoisted a Palestinian flag in its place. The flag flew for about an hour before firefighters removed it with a ladder vehicle. Berlin police detained three people at the scene, and the State Security division of the State Criminal Police Office opened an investigation on suspicion of defaming the state and its symbols, malicious damage to property, violation of the Berlin Assembly Freedom Act, and trespassing.

The group "Peacefully Against Genocide" claimed responsibility, saying the action was a protest against the German government's support for Israel and its silence over the war in Gaza. Ynet noted that the flag was raised a day before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom, though no report says the date was chosen deliberately.

No new government had been formed in Israel

The caption's premise fails on its own terms. Israel's parliament was sworn in on 10 November without a new government, according to Reuters, and no coalition had been formed when the video circulated. Benjamin Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister after his bloc won 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats, while Gadi Eisenkot, tasked with forming a government on 8 November, holds 48 seats with his allies and has yet to strike the deals that would bring him to power. If both men fail to build a coalition, another election could follow.

The claim appears designed to exploit that deadlock. Israel's deadlocked election left neither bloc with the 61 seats needed for a majority, and the uncertainty has already produced a run of misattributed videos — including a clip of Jordanian MPs praying in Amman that was falsely presented as Muslim Knesset members praying inside Israel's parliament, which we checked earlier this week.

The verdict

The video shows a real protest, in the wrong country, attached to a false premise. The flag was hoisted outside Germany's parliament in Berlin on 8 November by a pro-Palestinian activist, and it was taken down within about an hour. No Palestinian flag was raised in Israel, and no new Israeli government existed for it to be raised under. The claim is False.

Two independent fact-checks, published on 11 and 13 November, reached the same conclusion after their own reverse-image searches and checks of the German reporting. Follow our World News desk for ongoing coverage of the Israeli government deadlock and the Gaza war.