An altered photo of Athens Mayor Haris Doukas from Greece’s 2023 election campaign was shared on social media on October 7, 2024, the day marking one year since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel sparked a wider regional conflict. The fake image shows the politician wearing a shirt with the colors of the Palestinian flag. But the claim is incorrect: several Greek media organizations published the original photo showing Doukas in a white shirt during the 2023 campaign. The mayor’s office also confirmed to AFP that the image had been changed.
“According to unconfirmed reports, Comrade Haris Doukas has nominated himself as the new leader of HAMAS,” reads a July 31 message. Facebook postshared dozens of times.
The message contains a photo of former energy professor and current mayor of Athens Haris Doukas wearing a shirt in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
This same image was reshared on Facebook in October 2024 in a collage of several Greek politicians wearing the black and white keffiyeh scarf, which symbolized the Palestinian struggle against Israel (archived here).
“Islamo-leftism”, the new narrative of the left in Greece and Europe,” reads the caption of the post in Greek.
While AFP confirmed that the other images of Greek politicians in the collage are authentic, Doukas’ image was manipulated and shared outside its original context.
The original image dates from Doukas’ 2023 campaign for the Athens mayoral office, his news agency confirmed to AFP.
Moreover, during the 2023 elections, Greek media organizations widely published the original photo of the politician wearing a plain white shirt – not red, green, black and white.
The image was reshared in Facebook posts published on October 7, 2024, a year after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also kidnapped 251 people, both Israeli and foreign, 97 of whom are still being held in Gaza, 34 of whom have been killed, the Israeli military said.
Israel’s military retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 43,390 people, most of them civilians, according to Israel’s Health Ministry. The United Nations says these figures are reliable.
A photo from 2023
Using a reverse image search, AFP Fact Check found a photo similar to the one shared in Haris Doukas’s fake posts, but the politician is wearing a white shirt with a button-down, not a shirt in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
Several Greek media published the photo on August 3, 2023 – the same day Doukas officially announced his candidacy for mayor of Athens (archived here, here and here).
Several visual clues confirm that the photo published by Greek media is the same as the altered image shared on social media.
To Doukas’s left is the same man wearing a backpack, and both images have the same background, including a clear tree over the politician’s left shoulder and a roof hanging over the sidewalk.
But the image shared in the fake messages was changed to make it appear as if the Greek politician was wearing a pro-Palestinian shirt.
Image ‘faked’
AFP Fact Check contacted the mayor’s press team and confirmed the photos were taken during the 2023 election campaign.
“The photo shared on social networks was faked and does not correspond to reality,” Doukas’ office told AFP.
The Greek press also published other images of Doukas from the same day, showing him wearing the same white shirt.
In another photo published by Greek media on August 18, 2023, Doukas smiles into the camera in the same spot visible in the image of him walking on a sidewalk (archived here).
AFP searched for the photographer who took the original photo but could not find him.
No official position
Aris Doukas was elected Mayor of Athens in the second round of the municipal elections on October 15, 2023.
Since then, he has not taken an official position on the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Doukas came under fire on social media at the 2024 New Year’s Eve party when he addressed the crowd next to a young girl, who many social media users incorrectly claimed was a Palestinian girl, but is the daughter of two Greek celebrities, who were also on stage that evening. (archived here).
The politician was also criticized for allowing Palestinian flags to fly in the crowd during the celebration.
“It is a public space with free access. What was I supposed to do… is there a right-thinking person who would turn this celebration into a battlefield? But I think there were very few people making noise,” Doukas told the Greek newspaper. Mega during a television interview after the incident (archived here).
Other images authentic
However, the other photos in the Facebook post collage showing Greek political figures, including some wearing the keffiyeh scarf, are real.
The general secretary of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), Dimitris Koutsoumbas, is pictured above left, together with the former president of Greece’s main opposition party, Syriza, a representative of the New Left party, and the secretary of the left party, MeRA 25. .
AFP Fact Check found the original photos using a reverse image search.
Koutsoumbas – who often appears wearing a keffiyeh scarf – has denounced the conflict in the Gaza Strip and the possibility of a wider conflict in the region (archived here).
Stefanos Kasselakis of the Syriza party is pictured visiting Bethlehem in May 2024, where he called on the Greek government to recognize a Palestinian state (archived here).
Effie Achtsioglou of the New Left and Yanis Varoufakis, the head of MeRA 25, are often depicted carrying the black and white scarf (archived here).
AFP has verified other claims related to the Israeli-Gaza conflict here.
