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When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a sharp, sarcastic reply on March 16, 2026, relating to online conspiracy theories indicating that his recent public appearances were computer-generated and that he had been killed in the increasing Israel-Iran conflict.

The play started with a viral video of a press conference that allegedly depicted Netanyahu with six fingers on one hand, which caused suspicion that was enhanced by faked videos and deepfake claims. An AI-edited old military picture of him with 6 fingers was later used as a satirical X post to joke he always had six fingers to dispel the assertions.

A formal reply of Netanyahu's responded to critics: You waved a finger here with an emoji of a thinking face, getting the outrage out of line. In another earlier video, he was visiting a cafe in the Jerusalem area, thus sipping on coffee and raising his hands and adding five fingers each and stating, "Do you want to count my fingers?" See? Nice, very nice, as she was joking that she was dying of coffee.

The exchange quickly went viral, and fact-checks confirmed that it was optical illusions or shadows that were causing the six-finger illusion and not AI. The office of Netanyahu and his supporters rejected the rumors as fake news since regional tensions were on the rise.