Several old and AI-generated videos are being shared on social media falsely linking them to the ongoing Iranian strikes in Israel's Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv has been the target of multiple waves of Iranian missile strikes including from pro-Iranian Lebanese group Hezbollah, since the United States-Israel war on Iran began.
The Claim: Videos show Iranian strikes on Tel Aviv
The videos are being shared on X with claims that they show an Iranian hypersonic missile striking Tel Aviv airport, clashes and panic at Ben Gurion Airport as people try to flee Israel, and a missile hitting a high-profile celebration in Tel Aviv attended by generals and soldiers.
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What We Found:
Video 1: AI video claiming to show strike on Tel Aviv airport.
We analysed the video using the AI detection tool, DeepFake-O-Meter, developed by the University at Buffalo’s Media Forensics Lab, which flagged the video as synthetic, assigning it a 99.99% fake probability.
Video 2: July 2025 clash at Cinema City Jerusalem
We broke the video into key-frames and ran a reverse image search using Google Lens. The search results showed that the video dates back to July 2025.
The same video was posted on YouTube by Times of India on July 20, 2025, reporting on anti-Arab riots that broke out inside Jerusalem's Cinema City theatre. The footage showed Jewish youths vandalising the theatre and clashing with Arab employees while chanting "death to Arabs."
According to The Jerusalem Post, a large-scale brawl involving dozens of Jewish teenagers and Arab cafeteria workers broke out late Saturday night on July 19, 2025 at Cinema City in Jerusalem.
Video 3: Fire incident video predating the ongoing conflict
We broke the video into key-frames and ran a reverse image search using Google Lens; the results showed that the video predates the ongoing conflict.
We found a Facebook reel with the same video posted on January 17, 2026. According to the caption, the visuals show pyrotechnics, a firework display, which had gone wrong after being held indoors. While BOOM could not independently verify the video, it predates the West Asian conflict that began on February 28, 2026.
