What was claimed
The singer Adele was holding a Palestinian flag at one of her recent gigs.
Our verdict
This is false. Other videos show that it was a Mexican flag she was holding, at a performance that predated the most recent Israel-Gaza conflict.
Adele filmed holding Mexican flag not Palestinian one
24 November 2023
A video on TikTok with 3.7 million views claims to show a video of the singer Adele holding the Palestinian flag while singing the song ‘When We Were Young’. Similar posts have been shared on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
In a longer video clip of the same part of the gig, where she walks amongst the audience and is handed items by some of them, it’s clear that she’s actually holding the flag of Mexico. Although it includes patches of green, white and red, like the Palestinian flag, the coat of arms of the Mexican flag can clearly be seen 48 seconds in when she hands it to someone.
The clips appear to have been filmed on the 30 September performance as part of her ‘Weekends with Adele’ residency in Las Vegas. The longer video above had been posted on TikTok on 2 October, predating the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October.
Adele’s representatives have been approached for comment.
We’ve written about other false claims in which other public figures supposedly made statements about Israel or Gaza. We checked a deepfake appearing to show the model Bella Hadid speaking about the 7 October Hamas attack, posts claiming Brighton & Hove Albion manager Roberto De Zerbi had expressed “support for the Palestinian cause” on Instagram and a fake audio clip of London Mayor Sadiq Khan supposedly saying ‘Remembrance weekend’ events should be postponed in favour of a pro-Palestinian protest.
You can read more of our Israel-Gaza fact checking here.
Image courtesy of Kristopher Harris
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because she is holding the Mexican flag, not the Palestinian flag.