Fact Check: NOT victim of Israel’s phosphorous bomb, this woman suffers from rare skin disease

A video of a woman whose face appeared to be severely burnt has been widely shared on social media as a Palestinian victim of Israel’s white phosphorous attacks. Many shared the video and condemned the United States for being complicit in attacks like these.

Content Warning: This video contains graphic footage.

Sharing the video on Facebook, one person wrote, “This woman is a victim of Israel White Phosphorous bomb terrorist attacks. Israel is a malevolent entity.”

India Today Fact Check found that this woman is neither from Palestine nor a victim of white phosphorous burns. This woman, a resident of Fes, Morocco, suffers from a rare genetic skin disease.

Our Probe

In the viral video, we saw the watermark of the Instagram account “@airisputr8”. We then found the viral video shared as a reel by this account on February 9 without offering any information about the woman in question. In the comments, one person wrote that this was a Moroccan woman suffering from a genetic disease and that the video features the logo of a Moroccan charity organisation called Moonvoice.

Using this clue, we found that the viral video was originally shared on February 5 by the Instagram account of Ahmed Zainoun, in collaboration with Moonvoice Association.

The Moonvoice Association is a Moroccan charity organisation that helps children suffering from Xeroderma Pigmentosum — a genetic disorder that causes hypersensitivity to ultraviolet light, leaving people prone to eye problems, neurological symptoms, and even skin cancer. Those suffering from this affliction, per reports, are sometimes referred to as “moon children”. Ahmed Zainoun is the founder and president of Moonvoice Association, the charity.

We found that both accounts had shared several videos of children suffering from this skin disease, along with more videos of the woman in the viral video. According to the caption of one such post, the woman is Shaima, from Fes, a city in Morocco.

A search for her name and other relevant keywords in Arabic led us to social media videos and photos of her, shared as early as 2016 and 2017. These mentioned that this Moroccan woman suffered from a skin disease.

India Today reached out to Ahmed Zainoun, who confirmed that the woman in the viral video is Shaima, who suffers from Xeroderma Pigmentosum and is visually impaired. He further added that his organisation, Moonvoice Association, has been trying to help others like her, ever since it was established in 2020.

It is noteworthy that Israel has been accused of using white phosphorous in Gaza. However, the viral video does not have any links to the Israel-Palestine conflict at all.