After Indonesia’s president-elect said the country would evacuate children from Gaza, a video circulated in social media posts that falsely claimed it shows orphans arriving from the Palestinian territory. The footage is in fact from a refugee camp in Jordan, according to the charity worker who filmed it. A foreign ministry official confirmed the video was not filmed in Indonesia.
“Alhamdulillah (praise to be God), around 100 orphans who are victims of the Gaza war have arrived in Indonesia,” read an Indonesian-language Facebook post that shared the video on June 25.
“They have been rescued and deported to Indonesia. Thanks to the cooperation of the Indonesian embassy on the Palestinian border with Egypt and Jordan, alhamdulillah each of them will have an adoptive father and mother in Indonesia.”
The post added that the children were taken to a “four-star hotel”, where they stayed for three days and were “entertained” to help them deal with their trauma.
The video shows children eating meals with a woman who says that they are being cared for.
The video was shared in similar posts on X, YouTube, Snack Video and TikTok, which racked up more than 485,000 views in total.
At least 17,000 children in Gaza are estimated to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents, UNICEF said in February (archived link).
Indonesia’s president-elect Prabowo Subianto said in June that the world’s biggest majority-Muslim country was ready to take children from the Palestinian territory (archived link).
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed more than 38,700 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Gaza health ministry.
Irbid camp
The video is superimposed with the handle “@ awatiHidajat”.
A search on Instagram found the account belongs to Kristinawati Hidajat, president of fundraising platform Golden Future Indonesia (archived links here and here)
She posted the video on Instagram on June 21, identifying the location as Irbid refugee camp in northern Jordan (archived link).
“Currently, I am at the Palestinian camp, precisely in the Irbid area at the border of Syria and Jordan,” she wrote.
“These Palestinian orphans were all enthusiastic when we went to treat them. We ate and shared gifts of chocolate, sweets, biscuits and they also chose the toys that they liked. We spent around $45 for each of the orphan. Come on, who wants (to donate)!”
The Irbid camp was set up in 1951 to shelter Palestinian refugees who fled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the video from Kristinawati Hidajat’s Instagram (right):
In a separate Facebook post on June 25, she rubbished claims the video showed Palestinian children brought to Indonesia and that they had stayed at a hotel (archived link).
The footage showed Irbid camp on June 19 during Tasyrik Eid al-Adha, she wrote, referring to the three days following the Muslim holiday of Eid.
She said her team distributed meals and Eid gifts to “hundreds of Palestinian orphans”.
The Indonesian foreign ministry’s director for information and media Hartyo Harkomoyo confirmed to AFP that the video was not filmed in Indonesia.
AFP has fact-checked more misinformation around to the Israel-Hamas war here.
