Viral “IDF Execution” Video Is From 2018. Karam Qawasmi Was Not Killed
A video viewed millions of times on X this week claims to show Israeli soldiers allowing a Palestinian man to walk away before shooting and killing him in a “cold blooded field execution.”
The footage is real. The shooting is real.
The killing is not.
The Palestinian in the video was Karam Qawasmi. He survived the incident and was interviewed and photographed alive more than a year later.
The video is also not recent. It was filmed on May 25, 2018, and the Israeli personnel involved were Border Police officers, not IDF soldiers.
What Actually Happened to Karam Qawasmi
The incident occurred near the A'Zaim checkpoint, close to Ma'ale Adumim.
According to the subsequent Israeli court record, Border Police officers checked Qawasmi, found no grounds for suspicion and authorized him to leave.
The footage shows Qawasmi walking away with his hands raised. A shot is then fired from behind and he collapses.
But he was not shot with live ammunition.
The court record establishes that a sponge tipped round, a less lethal munition, was fired into his back or lower body.
The shooting was nevertheless unjustified.
The court found that the four officers had decided to fire at the Palestinian civilian essentially to relieve their boredom. The prosecution described the shooting as having no operational justification.
The Evidence That He Survived
There is no ambiguity about whether Qawasmi died in the incident.
In November 2019, approximately 18 months after the shooting, the Associated Press interviewed him at his home in Hebron and photographed him alive.
Qawasmi also subsequently spoke to The Times of Israel and Middle East Eye about the shooting.
There is no reliable evidence establishing his present status in September 2026, so Israel News Pulse is not claiming that he is alive today.
What the evidence conclusively establishes is that Qawasmi survived the shooting shown in the viral video.
Israel Prosecuted the Incident
The case also undermines another impression created when the old footage circulates without context: that the shooting simply happened and disappeared without consequences.
Israel's Police Internal Investigations Department investigated the incident.
A female Border Police officer was convicted of assault, reckless and negligent conduct with a weapon and obstruction of justice.
The court could not determine which of the four officers actually fired the round, but the conviction concerned the officers' decision to shoot and the subsequent obstruction of the investigation.
In May 2021, the officer was sentenced to five months of imprisonment served as community service work, plus a three month suspended sentence.
Contrary to some social media corrections now circulating, she was not sent to prison.
How an Eight Year Old Shooting Became a 2026 “Execution”
On September 9, the X account Adi Alardah posted the footage with the claim:
“IDF soldiers tell a young Palestinian man to continue on his way, then shoot him from a distance and kill him.”
The post called the incident a “cold blooded field execution.”
A screenshot captured while the post was circulating showed approximately 4 million views.
The description contains a mixture of genuine imagery and false context.
Qawasmi really was allowed to leave and then shot from behind. But the incident happened in 2018, the officers were Border Police rather than IDF soldiers, the projectile was a sponge tipped round rather than live ammunition, and most importantly, Qawasmi was not killed.
Calling it an execution changes the documented outcome of the incident.
Imam Omar Tawil Amplifies the Claim
The allegation spread beyond the original account.
An X post reviewed by Israel News Pulse shows the X account of sharing the post and adding:
“Anti-Semitic camera.”
Imam Omar Tawil was therefore amplifying a post explicitly telling its audience that the Palestinian shown falling in the video had been killed.
He had not.
Imam Omar Tawil is an Arizona based Muslim cleric, imam at the Islamic Community Center of Tempe, and a Muslim chaplain affiliated with Arizona State University, this is not the first time that he spreads antisemitic propaganda:
>> Arizona Imam Omar Tawil, CAIR Links and Anti-Israel Conspiracy Claims
>> Fact Check: Palestinian Teen Osama Was Not Killed by IDF in Viral West Bank Video
The Real Story Was Already Serious
None of this requires minimizing what happened to Qawasmi.
An Israeli court found that an innocent Palestinian civilian who had been cleared to leave was subjected to an unjustified shooting. Israeli authorities investigated the incident and an officer was criminally convicted.
Those facts are serious on their own.
But they do not turn the incident into a killing.
The viral post takes authentic footage of misconduct from May 2018 and gives millions of viewers a false ending in September 2026.
Karam Qawasmi was shot. He survived. The “field execution” being shared online never happened.
