Researchers from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) told NBC News on Tuesday a fake video of a purported Hamas operative threatening to attack the Paris Olympics appears to have originated in Russia.
The viral video depicted a man wearing a keffiyeh scarf over his face standing against a blank gray wall and speaking in Arabic. A Palestinian flag was draped across his chest.
The man warned “the people of France, and French President Macron” they would be punished with violence for supporting “the Zionist regime in its criminal war against the people of Palestine.”
“You provided Zionists with weapons, you helped murder our brothers and sisters, our children. You invited the Zionists to the Olympic games. You will pay for what you have done,” the man said.
“Rivers of blood will flow through the streets of Paris,” the man threatened. “This day is approaching, God willing. Allahu akbar.”
The video concluded with the supposed Hamas terrorist hoisting an obviously fake severed head splattered with red paint.
Questions about the veracity of the purported Hamas threat were raised as soon as it debuted in Egyptian media on Monday. Among other incongruous details, the alleged Hamas operative did not wear the green headband usually worn by members of the terrorist gang and the video was not circulated on known Hamas online networks.
MTAC reviewed the video at the request of NBC News and determined it was likely the work of Storm-1516, a “small but prolific outgrowth of Russia’s infamous Internet Research Agency troll farm.”
“This operation closely aligns with tactics, techniques and procedures observed in previous Storm-1516 operations, including a previous video that similarly pretended to be Hamas,” MTAC noted.
The Internet Research Agency, memorably described by one of its former employees as a “kitchen of state propaganda,” was a massive online disinformation operation linked to mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group. The remnants of the operation seemingly disintegrated soon after Prigozhin died in August 2023 due to complications from riding in an airplane after falling out of favor with strongman Vladimir Putin.
At its height, the propaganda kitchen was pumping out thousands of videos, memes, social media posts, and website comments per day. Internet Research Agency operatives attempted to imitate social media users in targeted countries and camouflage their information-warfare posts as legitimate news articles, advertisements, and commentary.
Storm-1516 has a history of attempting to imitate Hamas videos. In October, the group created a video that depicted ersatz Hamas operatives thanking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for providing them with weapons. The gray backdrop in the October video looked suspiciously like the gray wall behind the phony terrorist in the new “rivers of blood” clip.
NBC quoted MTAC researchers describing Storm-1516’s tactics as “creating videos in which actors allege a conspiracy and then posting those videos to relatively new online accounts with few followers.” These dupes proceed to “launder” the propaganda by pushing it to more legitimate news sites.
Although the “rivers of blood” video went viral after Egyptian media picked it up, MTAC determined the first appearance of the video was in a Twitter post from a fairly new account with a spotty history of posting nicknamed “Hamas Fighter.” It was then amplified with several known pro-Russian propaganda accounts, consistent with Storm-1516’s usual disinformation laundering tactics.
The video eventually racked up enough views on Russia’s propaganda network to attract the notice of Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) system linked to Twitter. Grok incorrectly linked the video to Hamas and claimed it has “sparked widespread concern and calls for increased security measures to ensure the safety of the event.” This analysis from the AI looks like the final booster stage the fake video needed to achieve disinformation orbit.
At no point did the fake video receive any attention from authentic Hamas accounts. Hamas denied making the video and claimed it might be Israeli propaganda, an accusation also picked up by Russian propagandists when they realized the video was not being taken very seriously.
French officials are very concerned with Olympic security and they were worried long before the fake Hamas operative waved his severed mannequin head on camera. Paris has been transformed into a veritable “open-air fortress,” as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) put it, with over 70,000 police, soldiers, and private security operatives patrolling the streets.
The UK Guardian saw a literal “ring of steel” appearing around the Olympic venue, a “suffocating lattice of metal barricades, dead ends and restricted zones.” Some Parisians said the city has been locked down more tightly than it was during the pandemic.
Terrorism from Hamas and other Iran-backed groups, as well as the Islamic State, is definitely on the list of official concerns. The Iranian government on Tuesday expressed umbrage at the extensive security measures undertaken for Israeli athletes and repeated its demand for Israel to be excluded from the Olympics.
“Announcing the reception and protection of the apartheid and terrorist Zionist regime’s convoy only means giving legitimacy to the child killers. They do not deserve to be present at the Paris Olympics because of the war against the innocent people of Gaza,” fumed the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
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