Posts falsely claim Netanyahu video fabricated to cover up his death
After Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Israeli public about the military campaign against Iran, a video purportedly showing the prime minister with an extra finger on his right hand circulated in posts claiming it was generated by AI and proved his death was covered up. The higher quality version released by the Israeli government, however, does not show Netanyahu with six fingers and he has made public appearances in the days since the video was released.
“Netanyahu’s latest video has raised doubts whether the images were generated by artificial intelligence, as he appears to have six fingers,” reads part of a simplified Chinese Weibo post shared on March 14, 2026.
“The question now is whether Netanyahu is really hiding, whether he has already been killed or whether he is seriously injured.”
Attached to the post is a short excerpt from the Israeli prime minister’s speech, which was slowed down and annotated to show that Netanyahu has six fingers on his right hand.
Such distortions were among the most commonly used anomalies to identify AI-generated content, particularly in the early days of mainstream generative AI. While these anomalies can still occur, they are becoming less common as generative AI software improves.
Two screenshots from the clip are also included in the post highlighting the anomalies seen with his hands.
Screenshot of the fake message captured on March 24, 2026, with a red X added by AFP
The clip was also shared in similar posts on Chinese Threads, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, as well as in other languages.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency also published a March 10 article on speculation that the Israeli prime minister was dead or injured (archived link).
But the circulating video does not show Netanyahu with six fingers on his right hand, and he appeared in public in the days after the messages were released.
Netanyahu’s official X account addressed the speculation in a March 15 video showing the Israeli leader in a cafe joking about the rumors and raising his hands in front of the camera (archived link).
Another video released on March 17 shows Netanyahu announcing that Israel had “eliminated” Iranian security chief Ali Larijani (archived link).
The Israeli prime minister again referenced rumors of his death during a press conference on March 19, telling the assembled journalists: “First of all, I want to say that I am alive, and you are all witnesses to it” (archived link).
AFP distributed photos of Netanyahu during a press briefing on March 19, while the Getty photo agency posted photos of himself on the site of an Iranian missile strike in southern Israel on March 22 (archived here and here).
Screenshot of photos of Netanyahu on the AFP forum
Remarks during the press conference
A reverse image search on Google using key frames from the video shared in the fake posts led to a YouTube video from the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) from March 13 (archived link).
The video, titled “Remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his press conference,” shows Netanyahu addressing citizens about the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran.
The fake messages used a short clip from the GPO video starting at 31 seconds. This shows that Netanyahu’s supposed “sixth finger” is actually his palm.
Comparison of screenshots of the fake Weibo post (L) and the GPO YouTube video
A frame-by-frame analysis of the clip shows that at no point does Netanyahu appear to have more than five fingers on each hand, although his hand sometimes appears slightly blurry.
“There is a lot of movement with the hands, and in any video, because the images change very quickly,” said Evangelos Kanoulas, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Amsterdam (archived link).
“You can take a screenshot and reach a point where there is a change in the images, all it takes is a screenshot at the moment where the camera switches from one shot to the next, especially if the video is compressed, because it loses quality and therefore definition and detail,” he said on March 17.
Screenshots from the GPO video, with figures added by AFP
Henry Ajder, an expert on synthetic content and deepfakes, also dismissed posts claiming the appearance of six fingers on Netanyahu’s hand as evidence of a plot to hide the death or injury of the Israeli prime minister (archived link).
“The Israeli government and Israeli intelligence services are among the most sophisticated in the world,” Ajder said. “If they were going to do that, they wouldn’t make a mistake as simple and as obvious as that.”
AI detection models
Some internet users have turned to AI detection tools, sometimes getting results indicating that all or part of the video was created using AI.
AFP released multiple versions of the video – obtained from different social media platforms and with varying degrees of compression – via the Hive Moderation tool, one of the most popular AI detectors (archived link).
The results ranged from 0.1 to eight percent certainty in generating AI.
Screenshots of Hive moderation results
Kanoulas explained that results can vary depending on the degree of video compression and the type of analysis used.
“Generally speaking, deep fakes leave traces, so it’s not impossible to determine whether something is a deep fake,” he said, adding that this type of analysis is worthwhile.
He also suggested looking into how suspicious videos are distributed and whether the source is trustworthy, as well as analyzing the original video instead of a compressed version that has been downloaded.
The AFP has already debunked other misinformation linked to Netanyahu.
