AAP FACTCHECK – A song about pagers was created to celebrate the recent attacks on Hezbollah, social media posts are claiming.
This is false. An old Saudi Arabian pop song dating back to the 1990s is being misrepresented and falsely linked to the explosions in Lebanon.
Posts shared widely on Australian social media accounts, including on X, claim: “Arab citizens and singers have started creating songs and music videos with the hashtag ‘#pager’, celebrating Israel’s successful targeting of Hezbollah terrorists.
“The only people who support these monsters are college students in the West.”
The posts include excerpts from an Arabic-language music video, interspersed with footage of the exploding pagers and manipulated footage of a supposed explosion involving Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in Israeli strikes on September 27.
A wave of explosions in Lebanon on September 17 and 18 detonated pagers and walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah, killing at least 32 people. The attacks have been widely attributed to Israel but officials there have declined to comment.
The song that features in the false claims predates the recent pager attacks – it featured on a 1995 album by Saudi singer Saleh Khayri.
The lyrics tell of a man waiting for his lover to contact him using a pager.
The song has been on YouTube since July 2020, having been posted by a Kuwaiti channel. The footage in the video matches up with that in the social media post (from 19 seconds).
Another post on X, by Saudi media company Thmanyah, from May 2022 shares the same song and uses artwork featuring Mr Khayri.
That X post, translated into English by Google, is captioned: “In the nineties, the artist Saleh Khairi sang: ‘You tease me and enter your secret number’,” with the caption going on to explain that the song includes “pager technology”.
Reportedly titled “Tibajerni”, according to media website Semafor its chorus is “page me and enter your secret code, the pager is making me reel”, and it’s noted the song has spread widely since the Lebanon explosions.
A page on the music database Discogs identifies Khairi as having released several albums in the 1990s.
The claims have also recently been debunked by Pakistan’s Soch Fact Check.
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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