In mid-December, several accounts on X claimed that a video of British singer Adele showed her holding a Palestinian flag. But Adele was actually holding a Mexican flag at a concert that was held before the start of the war, on September 30, 2023 in Las Vegas.
If you only have a minute
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Internet users are claiming that British singer Adele was filmed holding a Palestinian flag at a concert.
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The artist was in fact holding a Mexican flag, as shown in other, longer videos of the sequence.
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The concert was held at the end of September, just a few days before the start of the conflict in Israel and Palestine.
The fact-check, in detail
"British singer Adele [...] sings for Palestine", says the X account of Oumma.com, which describes itself as a news website for the French-speaking Muslim community, in a post on December 14 that has been viewed more than 600,000 times.
Like other accounts on X and Facebook, Oumma.com relies on a short video of less than 30 seconds shared on TikTok. The TikTok video, posted on November 14 by an account with 500,000 followers and nearly 4 million views, is accompanied by a caption that reads in English: "Adele singing when we were young while holding flag of palestine[sic]".
In this sequence, the artist is filmed singing in the stands of a theatre, with several gifts in her arms from the spectators around her.
A Mexican flag, not a Palestinian flag
Among the gifts was a flag in white, green and red. These colours prompted several people online to say that the artist was holding a Palestinian flag.
Except that Adele wasn't holding a Palestinian flag, but a Mexican one. Several other longer sequences of the scene can be found on YouTube or TikTok using a reverse image search (click here to see how).
In two of them, it's possible to make out the Mexican flag emblem when Adele drops off her presents with a member of the control room. This is the case in this one-minute video posted on TikTok on October 2, before the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
A concert before the Israel-Hamas war
This event actually took place before the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7.
According to the captions on several videos found on different platforms, the concert took place on September 30, during the artist's concert residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for "Weekends With Adele".
This particular concert was attended by stars such as basketball player LeBron James and Paul McCartney, as shown in several videos of the same scene on YouTube and in blog posts.
During the concert, fans gave Adele a number of flags from many different countries, as seen in several videos of the vent. But none of the videos we saw showed a Palestinian flag.
Several verification media, including Reuters, USA Today and the Indian media outlet Boom, had already debunked this claim in mid-November when the video was published on TikTok. It has been circulating again since December 13, notably on X.
