Claim:
Videos authentically show Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag at a United Nations event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rating:
Fake (About this rating?)
In late April and early May 2026, a series of videos circulated online that claimed to authentically show Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag at a United Nations event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One Facebook user shared a popular video (archived) that appeared to show Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag around her neck while walking past Netanyahu as he stood in front of a U.N. backdrop.
The Facebook user wrote, "Iron Lady, Prime Minister Meloni, heartfelt respect for your leadership! Don't know it's real or AI but lots of respect."
Other videos and images around the same theme — Meloni wearing the Palestinian flag while standing or walking near Netanyahu — circulated on X (archived) and Threads (archived).
The three videos that Snopes analyzed were all fake. Two of them, which both claimed to show Meloni walking near Netanyahu at a U.N. event while wearing a Palestinian flag, originated from accounts that created several fake videos of the same scenario.
The creators of two of the videos said they used artificial intelligence to create them.
There are likely more iterations of this claim on social media that can also be dismissed as fake. Snopes will address them on a case-by-case basis when readers express interest. For now, this rating applies only to the videos and images listed above.
Debunking the videos
Snopes inspected three videos that claimed to show Meloni and Netanyahu.
The first video, which appeared to show Meloni and Netanyahu at a U.N. event, came from a TikTok account (archived) that labeled it as AI-generated. Our visual analysis also confirmed the video was AI-generated due to an incorrectly rendered Palestinian flag at the six-second mark. While the flag Meloni wore in the video used the red, black and green colors of the actual Palestinian flag, they were arranged in an incorrect order and shape.
The second video also appeared to show Meloni and Netanyahu at a U.N. event. It came from a TikTok account (archived) that produced several different videos of Meloni and Netanyahu. The TikTok user marked some of these videos as AI-generated, though it had not added the label to the video that spread widely on other platforms. We confirmed this video was an AI-generated fake because it also showed an incorrectly rendered Palestinian flag at the eight-second mark.
Screenshots from the third video circulated on Threads. The user who originally shared that video (archived) said it was AI-generated. The video claimed to show Meloni slapping Netanyahu but displayed classic AI tells, including unreadable text on a nameplate at the one-second mark and 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 targeted by AI and deepfakes
It was unclear why seemingly separate accounts decided to create fake videos of Meloni in late April and early May 2026, 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."
Around 1,200 people died when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas militants also took 251 hostages into Gaza. According to the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health, 72,619 Palestinians had died (archived) in the resulting war in the Gaza Strip by May 6, 2026. At the time of this writing, there had been a formal ceasefire in place between the Israeli military and Hamas since October 10, 2025.
Meloni wrote (archived) on X on May 5, 2026, that she had been targeted by AI-generated photos, including one that appeared to show her in her 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.
Sources:
BARRY, COLLEEN. 'Israeli Attacks on Gaza Are "beyond the Principle of Proportionality," Italy's Meloni Says'. AP News, 27 Aug. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/italy-meloni-gaza-condemns-israel-c6fac4c49322871f60eb4ebf88c2bd30.
FRANKEL, JULIA, and PHIL HOLM. 'These Numbers Show How 2 Years of War Have Devastated Palestinian Lives in Gaza'. AP News, 7 Oct. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/october-7-deaths-israel-hamas-war-707cd188234d3fa5bb3129426cf703c5.
Ghiglione, Davide, and Laura Gozzi. 'Italy Will Not Renew Defence Agreement with Israel, Meloni Says'. BBC News, 14 Apr. 2026, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr71184ex91o.
Smith, Whitney. 'Flag of Palestine Liberation Organization'. Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/flag-of-Palestine-Liberation-Organization.
Swatton, Phil, and Margaux Leblanc. What Are Deepfakes and How Can We Detect Them? 7 June 2024, https://www.turing.ac.uk/blog/what-are-deepfakes-and-how-can-we-detect-them.
