By Kevin Barrett, for American Free Press
Since 1980, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Iran is on the brink of developing nuclear weapons. How many times has he made those false claims ? I could count them on the fingers of one hand...if I had AI-generated hands with an infinite supply of fingers.
How many times has Netanyahu tried to drag the US into war with Iran ? Too many to count on a normal hand, that's for sure.
And how many times has Netanyahu lied shamelessly on camera ? I might need infinite hands with infinite fingers, like Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, to tally those up.
Otto Von Bismarck is apocryphally supposed to have said, "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." In the case of Netanyahu, I won't believe anything unless he has denied it at least three times. For example, I was not certain that Israel had killed Charlie Kirk until Netanyahu issued three increasingly strident and unconvincing denials.
Since the second week of the current war, Netanyahu has issued a series of proof-of-life videos. He keeps insisting that rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated. Why does he feel the need to do that?
In early March, after the dastardly Israeli-American strike on Iran's top leaders during their meeting to approve a fake "breakthrough agreement," Iran pounded Tel Aviv with missiles, destroying, among other things, one of Netanyahu's residences. When the Israeli Prime Minister canceled various appearances and was not seen for ten days, social media lit up with rumors of his demise.
On March 13, Netanyahu filmed a proof-of-life video and posted it on social media. Commenters pointed out that Netanyahu seemed to have six fingers on one of his hands. That's a common "tell" for an AI fake.
If Netanyahu were alive, skeptics noted, why would his office post AI-generated videos ? Israel kept Ariel Sharon on life support for eight years to avoid admitting he was dead. Was this another deception?
But if the tech-savvy Israeli government wanted to claim its dead leader were alive, would it really be unable to generate an AI video showing the correct number of fingers ? Maybe the Israelis were deliberately trolling us with a bad AI video ? Any way you sliced it, it was a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
Two days later, the wanted-for-genocide Prime Minister posted another proof-of-life video. This time he appeared in a Jerusalem coffee shop and flashed the correct number of fingers.
But social media users weren't convinced. To prove how easily the video could have been faked, they created equally plausible videos showing martyred anti-Israel leaders including Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei doing exactly what Netanyahu did in the same Jerusalem coffee shop. The AI avatars of other famous figures, including Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, also seemingly started visiting the Sataf Café in Occupied Jerusalem.
Two days after making Sataf Café famous, Netanyahu met with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who claimed he had been tasked by Trump with verifying that the Israeli PM was alive. Huckabee insisted that the man he met was the real Netanyahu, not an AI avatar or hologram, adding that rumors of the Israeli war criminal's death were "as phony as a kosher pork chop." Since then, "Bloody Bibi" has been presiding over cabinet meetings and issuing videos. Unfortunately, he is probably still alive and kicking.
What lessons should we learn from this bizarre controversy ? First, billions of people avidly yearn for Netanyahu's death. They are primed for premature celebration, and will pounce upon any apparent evidence that the biggest villain of the 21st century has finally bit the dust.
Second, the proliferation of AI videos has changed the world's epistemological landscape. For decades, videos were better proof than words. For example, all of the official lies about 9/11, totaling in the trillions of words, could be exposed by one seven-second video clip of World Trade Center Building 7 coming down in an obvious controlled demolition.
But now, thanks to AI, a realistic-looking video of an event is no longer strong evidence that the event in question really happened. We need to vet our sources of information now in ways that were less necessary in the past.
Yes, video fakery has always been with us. The Zapruder film, for example, was altered. And some 9/11 videos may also have been altered to support "no planes" theories.
But now, anyone with enough time on their hands can alter or forge screen media far better than CIA-Mossad could in 1963 or 2001. That's why billions of people no longer believe a pathological liar like Netanyahu even when he films himself truthfully insisting that he is alive.
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