Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a heart condition and has used a pacemaker since 2023. However, November 2024 social media posts claiming he was hospitalized with a "serious health issue" are false; the Israeli leader gave a speech to lawmakers when he was supposedly admitted, and experts told AFP the image shared online is likely AI-generated.
"BREAKING NETANYAHU HOSPITALISED He suffered serious health issue in Kiryah and has been shifted to a hospital in Tel Aviv," says a November 17 X post from Sulaiman Ahmed, a creator who has monetized misinformation about Israel's war with Hamas.
The post includes a picture Ahmed describes as an "archive pic" of Netanyahu asleep in a hospital, wearing a ventilator mask.
Israel has been fighting a war with Hamas and its Lebanon-based ally Hezbollah since October 7, 2023, when the former launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war has reached 43,972, a majority civilians, figures that the United Nations considers reliable.
"We will be forced to ensure our security in the north (of Israel) and to systematically carry out operations against Hezbollah's attacks ... even after a ceasefire," he told lawmakers.
Since beginning his latest stint as prime minister in December 2022, Netanyahu has visited the hospital several times, including when doctors installed a pacemaker in July 2023 and revealed he had suffered a transient heart block. In April 2024, Netanyahu also underwent full anesthesia during a hernia surgery at a Jerusalem medical center.
Likely AI-generated
The photo being shared of Netanyahu was likely generated by artificial intelligence, experts said.
Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California-Berkeley (archived here), said he analyzed the image using three models trained to identify pictures created using artificial intelligence, all of which classified it as "likely" being AI-generated.
He told AFP on November 19 that he compared the image with actual photographs of Netanyahu and found the left ear was different from that of the Israeli prime minister, indicating it is "not authentic."
Siwei Lyu, director of the State University of New York at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab (archived here), also ran the image through a program designed to detect deepfake images and found it is likely not authentic. He, too, noted differences in the shape of the prime minister's ear compared to the one seen in the posts.