Israel’s Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, has moved to publicly quash a wave of viral disinformation alleging that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has died and that recent footage of him was generated using artificial intelligence.
Speaking directly to ANI on the rumors circulating across social media, Azar offered an unambiguous personal rebuttal – stating he had seen the Prime Minister with his own eyes during recent visits to Israel and that a widely discussed cafe video was entirely authentic.
What the Ambassador Said: A Personal Rebuttal to Social Media Speculation
The Israeli envoy to India did not mince words in addressing the conspiracy theories. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is alive. I saw him personally when I was in Israel more than once. This video at the cafe is not AI-fabricated.
There is a lot of disinformation,” he said. The statement is notable both for its directness and for its source: a senior diplomat invoking first-hand witness to counter what he characterized as a deliberate and organized disinformation campaign.
How the Rumors Began: Allegations of Deepfakes and a ‘Six-Finger Glitch’
The controversy has its origins in a set of viral posts that scrutinized Netanyahu’s recent public addresses, with critics alleging visual inconsistencies they attributed to deepfake technology.
The claims gained particular momentum when social media users pointed to what they described as an AI rendering error in one video – a figure appearing to display six fingers rather than five, a tell-tale artefact sometimes associated with algorithmically generated imagery.
Israeli diplomatic officials dismissed those allegations as baseless, but the speculation continued to accelerate across platforms.
Netanyahu’s Cafe Video: A Deliberate Five-Finger Response?
The controversy deepened after Netanyahu himself posted a short clip on X, formerly Twitter, showing him drinking coffee at a café in what appeared to be a relaxed, unscripted setting.
During the recording, the Prime Minister briefly raises his hand in a manner that observers widely interpreted as a pointed rebuttal to the six-finger allegations – visibly displaying five fingers to the camera.
Whether or not the gesture was calculated, it generated considerable discussion, with supporters reading it as a direct and deliberate answer to his detractors, and skeptics arguing it did little to settle the underlying questions about the authenticity of earlier footage.
Disinformation in Wartime: Why These Claims Are Gaining Traction
The episode is unfolding against the backdrop of an active and deeply polarizing conflict, a context in which disinformation about key leaders historically finds fertile ground.
The claim that a sitting head of government has died and been replaced by AI-generated footage is not new as a category of political rumor – similar allegations have been leveled at other world leaders – but the speed and scale at which these particular claims spread underscores the degree to which even diplomatically sensitive information ecosystems are now vulnerable to viral fabrication.
Ambassador Azar’s use of the word “disinformation” signals that Israeli officials view the campaign not as organic skepticism but as something more coordinated.
