Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted an uncommon video this week: of himself shopping for espresso at a Jerusalem-area cafe.
It was hardly typical fare for wartime, when Netanyahu can extra typically be seen giving recorded addresses or touring missile injury inside Israel. However the prime minister had include an vital mission: to debunk viral claims of his demise.
The claims, which originated on Iranian state media final week, have been picked up by social media customers on Thursday after Netanyahu gave his first press convention through the struggle.
Zooming in on particulars within the seemingly innocuous handle, some claimed that Netanyahu had an additional finger on his proper hand and lacking enamel, indicators they mentioned have been key tells of AI-generated content material.
“Think about Netanyahu was truly useless this whole previous week,” the pro-Palestinian TikTok influencer Man Christensen wrote in a publish on X. “It’s too good to be true however Israel has been utilizing AI generated movies of Netanyahu ever since. One can solely hope.”
From the cafe Sataf, Netanyahu issued his response to the conspiracy, posting a video on Sunday of him ordering a espresso, chatting with baristas and telling Israelis that the wars in opposition to Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been going effectively.
“They are saying I’m what?” the caption learn. Mocking the concept he had been killed, he joked, “I’m dying for espresso!” Then, alluding to the hypothesis in regards to the earlier video, he asks, “Do you wish to rely the variety of fingers?” earlier than holding up every hand together with his fingers outstretched.
However fairly than quelling the claims of his demise, the Israeli chief’s response as an alternative spurred extra hypothesis, with customers on social media calling into query particulars within the video together with the physics of his espresso cup. In one other video posted by Netanyahu on Monday, some social media customers pointed to a clip the place a hoop seemingly disappears from his hand in one of many frames.
“ISRAEL: ‘Benjamin Netanyahu remains to be alive. Right here’s one other AI video of him as proof. Simply belief me, goy,’ the antisemitic podcaster Stew Peters wrote in a publish on X.
The churn of conspiratorial claims in regards to the Israeli chief’s demise, which additionally included an AI-generated picture of him being pulled from rubble, highlights the rising problem of combating misinformation in an period of synthetic intelligence and viral deepfakes, particularly throughout occasions of battle.
The struggle with Iran has produced an absolute flood of fabricated imagery, from AI-generated clips circulated by pro-Iran accounts purporting to point out missile strikes flattening Tel Aviv or the seize of American troops by Iranian forces. The Israeli disinformation detection firm Cyabra mentioned it recognized networks containing tens of hundreds of accounts that generated materials garnering 145 million views within the first two weeks of the struggle — nearly all pro-Iranian, and totally on TikTok. (The corporate mentioned over the past Israel-Iran struggle, in June 2025, that Iran’s web outage had quelled disinformation bot farms positioned there.)
“The marketing campaign didn’t unfold organically. Clear coordination patterns have been recognized, together with repeated narratives, equivalent movies and captions, fastened hashtag clusters, and synchronized burst posting,” Cyabra mentioned in its report revealed Friday. “These techniques allowed the community to quickly flood the data setting and dominate on-line discussions throughout key moments of the battle.”
The movies have left a few of Israel’s critics assured that the nation has been battered far past what has been formally reported.
However even Israeli tv has not been immune, airing its personal misinformation too — albeit unwittingly.
Channel 12 Information final week aired a night-vision clip that it mentioned confirmed American B-2 stealth bombers over Iran flying in formation with F-18 fighter jets.
Inside hours, the clip was recognized not as a Pentagon launch, as Channel 12 navy correspondent Nir Dvori had urged on air, however as footage from the fight flight simulator Digital Fight Simulator World. Itay Blumental, Dvori’s counterpart at rival public broadcaster Kan, wrote on X that the footage was “certainly unimaginable, but additionally lifted from a online game,” sharing the identical YouTube clip from March 2023.
Throughout Monday night’s broadcast, Dvori apologized and mentioned the error was “totally mine,” however didn’t specify which footage he was referring to, leaving viewers who had missed the sooner phase with little indication of what had gone unsuitable. The information community additionally issued an apology, saying it might “look at its procedures.”
The correct-wing Channel 14 additionally aired the clip — greater than as soon as.
i24 Information made the same mistake, the Haaretz newspaper reported, airing a video it handled as obvious footage of an American strike on Iran, although the clip was additionally from Digital Fight Simulator World.
The segments rapidly grew to become web fodder, with social media customers lampooning the information networks and posting their very own tongue-in-cheek “unique struggle footage.”
Omer Babai, who runs Kan’s social media, posted a GIF on X of shoot ’em up online game Rooster Invaders, saying it confirmed “American bombers in Iranian skies.”
One other X consumer quipped: “Nir Dvori: Iran scattered mines throughout the Strait of Hormuz,” alongside a screenshot of classic PC sport Minesweeper.
A 3rd posted a picture of fellow Nineteen Nineties gaming staple “Digger,” with the caption: “Unique footage of Sinwar within the tunnels of Gaza,” referencing the Hamas chief killed by the IDF. Road Fighter and Pac-Synthetic cameo appearances too.
Channel 14, broadly seen as sympathetic in the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, isn’t any stranger to broadcasting doubtful footage. Earlier within the struggle, the channel aired a video it mentioned confirmed crowds in Tehran showing to specific help for the Israeli premier with chants of “Bibi joon” — a Persian time period of affection translated roughly as “expensive Bibi.” However the on-line Israeli fact-checker FakeReporter later mentioned the mantra had been generated with synthetic intelligence.
However the B2 gaffes are one facet of a a lot wider phenomenon.
One viral clip, shared throughout X, TikTok and different platforms, appeared to point out missiles pounding Tel Aviv and condo blocks collapsing beneath a barrage. AFP and several other different retailers discovered it had been generated utilizing AI, citing telltale distortions in automobiles, rooftops, smoke trails and even the position of an Israeli flag sans pole. The Grok AI chatbot on X, nonetheless, helped amplify the video, with repeated assurances that “the video is actual,” AFP reported.
After the video was uncovered as AI-generated, an X account beneath the identify Abdulruhman Ismail, one of many first to share the footage in a publish that drew 4 million views, mentioned he would depart it up “as a result of the scene displays, painfully, what Gaza has endured beneath Israeli bombardment.” He added, “I’m retaining this publish for transparency. The video will not be actual, however the devastation it evokes is actual, and it mirrors what Palestinians have lived by.”
Through the June 2025 struggle, pro-Iran accounts equally circulated pretend movies and pictures claiming to point out strikes devastating Tel Aviv in addition to Iranian forces downing Israeli F-35s.
Australian wire AAP debunked a number of fakes from this spherical of battle, together with a video claiming that an Iranian strike set a CIA facility in Dubai ablaze, in addition to a fabricated picture purporting to point out late Iranian supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, useless beneath a pile of rubble.
A separate fabricated clip that racked up tens of tens of millions of views purported to point out the Burj Khalifa engulfed in flames as crowds rushed in its course.
The Tehran Occasions additionally shared false pictures and false studies of in depth injury to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
Iran’s embassy in Austria posted an AI picture of a kid’s backpack, claiming it was taken on the Minab faculty in Iran that was hit on the primary day of the struggle.
Tasnim, the Iranian state-affiliated information company, shared an AI-generated picture on X purporting to point out an American radar set up in Qatar destroyed in an Iranian strike, The New York Occasions reported. The paper mentioned Iran’s propaganda “seems centered extra on swaying worldwide audiences,” portraying the “success of Tehran’s counteroffensive in effusive phrases.”
However X’s head of product informed the BBC that 99% of the accounts spreading AI-generated struggle movies have been making an attempt to “sport monetization,” posting sensational content material to rack up engagement and qualify for funds by the platform’s creator income program. The social media large introduced that it’s going to briefly droop creators from this system in the event that they publish AI-generated movies of armed battle with out disclosing that they have been pretend.
British politician George Galloway posted a video final week containing AI imagery through which he narrates that the “apocalypse is burning Tel Aviv,” that the town “now appears to be like like Gaza,” and that air defenses over Tel Aviv are “not operational.” He says his info got here from associates on “Sheinkin Road, Tel Aviv, close to Dizengoff Sq..”
Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy seized on the canard, posting response movies of sun-soaked seaside scenes and considered one of himself at Dizengoff Sq., casually sipping an iced espresso with the very a lot intact plaza behind him.
Some individuals responded to the video by cheering Levy on, saying that they, too, have been having fun with a phenomenal day in a principally intact Tel Aviv. However others resisted the proof in entrance of them. “Low cost Jew propaganda,” one commenter wrote. “It’s mainly flattened out.”
Reporting the tales that outline our period. When historical past unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your help ensures we will doc the complexities of struggle and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.
