In September 2026, as the United Nations held its annual meeting in New York, a video (archived) circulated online that social media users claimed showed Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag at a United Nations event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One X user shared the video, writing:
BREAKING:📷
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni:
"I am a woman and also a mother.
I cannot stand with someone who kills innocent children."
The brave woman continued to walk around wearing a Palestinian flag around her neck in front of Netanyahu.
The same video also circulated elsewhere on X (archived, archived).
Snopes previously investigated the footage in May 2026. We found then it was fake.
The clip came from a TikTok account (archived) that created several fake videos of the same scenario and contained visual signs of artificial intelligence software.
The TikTok user marked some of these videos as AI-generated, though the label was missing from some versions of the footage that spread widely on other platforms. We confirmed the video was an AI-generated fake because it showed an incorrectly rendered Palestinian flag at the eight-second mark.
There's no record of Netanyahu and Meloni attending the same U.N. event in 2026 either. According to the reputable photo agency Getty Images, the two last met in March 2023 in Rome. Meloni did not attend the annual meeting in September 2026.
Meloni targeted by AI and deepfakes
It was unclear why the TikTok account in question decided to create a fake video of Meloni suggesting she had a poor relationship with Netanyahu.
In August 2025, Meloni criticized the Israeli military's response to the 2023 Hamas attacks as "beyond the principle of proportionality." In April 2026, she announced Italy would not renew a defense agreement with Israel. She reportedly did not specify a reason beyond referring to "the current situation."
Meloni wrote (archived) on X on May 5, 2026, that she was the subject of several popular AI-generated photos, including one that appeared to show her in underwear.
The Italian prime minister wrote, "Deepfakes are a dangerous tool, because they can deceive, manipulate, and strike anyone. I can defend myself. Many others cannot."
"Deepfake" is an umbrella term for AI-generated content. This content can be generated by altering existing, authentic material or created from scratch. According to the Alan Turing Institute, the U.K.'s national institute for data science and AI, deepfakes are often created "with the intention to deceive or entertain viewers."
For further reading, Snopes routinely debunks fake or deepfake content.
Facts Only
* Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are the primary subjects.
* A video circulated on X in September 2026 claiming to show Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag at a United Nations event with Netanyahu.
* The video includes a quote attributed to Meloni: "I am a woman and also a mother. I cannot stand with someone who kills innocent children."
* Snopes investigated the footage in May 2026 and identified it as AI-generated.
* The content originated from a TikTok account that produced multiple versions of the same scenario.
* An incorrectly rendered Palestinian flag appears at the eight-second mark of the video.
* Meloni did not attend the September 2026 United Nations annual meeting.
* The last recorded meeting between Meloni and Netanyahu occurred in March 2023 in Rome.
* In August 2025, Meloni described the Israeli military response to 2023 Hamas attacks as "beyond the principle of proportionality."
* In April 2026, Italy announced it would not renew a defense agreement with Israel.
* On May 5, 2026, Meloni stated on X that she had been the target of AI-generated photos.
Executive Summary
A video circulating in September 2026 purported to show Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag and criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu during a United Nations event. However, evidence confirms the footage is an AI-generated fake. Analysis of the video reveals rendering errors in the flag, and official records show that Meloni did not attend the UN meeting in question, nor had she met with Netanyahu since March 2023.
The emergence of this deepfake follows a period of shifting diplomatic tension. In late 2025 and early 2026, Meloni criticized the proportionality of Israel's military actions and declined to renew a bilateral defense agreement. While these policy shifts provide a backdrop of friction, they do not validate the fabricated video. Meloni has publicly identified herself as a target of multiple AI-generated manipulations, warning that deepfakes are dangerous tools for deception and manipulation.
Full Take
The strongest version of this narrative is a cautionary tale about the erosion of visual evidence. It demonstrates how AI can be used to synthesize a "truth" that aligns with existing political frictions—in this case, Meloni's actual diplomatic pivot away from Israel—to make a fabrication feel plausible to a predisposed audience.
This is a classic application of SKEPTICAL MODE. The narrative relies on the "Truth Sandwich" technique: wrapping a lie in layers of verifiable context (the actual diplomatic tension) to lower the viewer's critical defenses. The most dangerous element here is not the poor rendering of a flag, but the emotional resonance of the fake quote, which leverages identity markers ("woman," "mother") to bypass logical scrutiny and trigger an immediate moral response.
The root cause is the weaponization of "plausible divergence." By utilizing a leader who has already expressed nuanced criticism of an ally, the bad actor creates a narrow window of belief where the deepfake doesn't look like a total departure from reality, but rather an escalation of it. This threatens human agency by replacing observed behavior with manufactured performance, shifting the burden of proof from the creator to the observer.
Patterns detected: none
If this were a coordinated influence campaign, the playbook would involve "seeding" the video across fragmented echo chambers simultaneously, using bot networks to amplify the "bravery" of the subject to trigger viral sharing before fact-checkers can respond. The actual content is a debunking of such a campaign, not the campaign itself.
Bridge Questions:
1. How does the existence of "partial truths" (real diplomatic tension) make "total fakes" (deepfakes) more effective?
2. At what point does the public's awareness of deepfakes lead to "the liar's dividend," where real evidence is dismissed as AI?
3. What institutional safeguards can verify a leader's presence or absence at a global event in real-time?
Sentinel — Human
The text appears to be human-written journalistic analysis that factually debunks a piece of disinformation while connecting it to broader themes regarding AI manipulation, supported by references to established fact-checking bodies.