Image of Israeli swimmers spelling out ‘bring them home now’ isn’t from 2024 Olympics

An image that claims to show Israeli swimmers calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas during the Paris 2024 Olympics is going viral across social media.

The image shows swimmers using their bodies to spell out “Bring them home now!,” a slogan that’s been associated with calls for the release of Israeli hostages.  

A viral Facebook post sharing the image says, “The Israeli Olympic team was not allowed to wear their yellow ‘Bring Them Home’ pins at the Olympic games. So they decided to spell it out for the entire world to see it!”

On X, a post with over 50 million views makes a similar claim. It says Israeli Olympic athletes formed the “bring them home now” message during practice because they couldn’t wear pins with the same slogan during the Paris 2024 games. 

THE QUESTION

Was the image of Israeli swimmers spelling out “bring them home now” taken during the Paris 2024 Olympics? 

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

No, the image of Israeli swimmers spelling out “bring them home now” was not taken during the Paris 2024 Olympics. 

WHAT WE FOUND

The image of Israeli artistic swimmers spelling out “bring them home now” was not taken during the Paris 2024 Olympics. It was taken in Israel and first shared online in November 2023 – less than a month after the start of the Israel-Hamas War.

Using a reverse image search tool, VERIFY traced the image of the Israeli swimmers back to an Instagram post from the Wingate Institute, a sports complex in Israel, shared on Nov. 18, 2023.

The post translated from Hebrew to English says, “The girls of Israel’s artistic swimming team training at the Wingate Institute, the National Institute for Sports Excellence, led by coaches Svetlana Belcher and Risa Kunin – in a cry for the return of the abductees and raising awareness in the world of the crimes against humanity committed on October 7, 2023 by Hamas terrorists.” 

The official Instagram account for Israel’s artistic swimming team shared the same image with a similar caption one day later. 

So we can VERIFY this image was taken in Israel in November 2023 – not during the Paris 2024 Olympics.

It appears that the image is a composite edited using multiple photographs. The Israeli artistic swimming team’s Instagram post from November shows some of the individual photos that were likely used to create the composite image.

VERIFY also could not find any credible news reports about Israeli athletes being banned from wearing “bring them home” pins at the Olympics, as the viral posts suggest. The International Olympic Committee did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publishing.