Iranian state media and netizens online have been spreading rumours that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dead. However, the global leader appeared to strategically hush those speculations over the weekend. As the US and Israel continue to wage a war on Iran, Netanyahu decided to step out for coffee to do his part to respond to the viral chatter.
The Israeli PM posted a video of himself getting a cup of coffee and chatting with his team on Sunday. Nonetheless, even that clip wasn’t enough to persuade many internet sleuths, who chose to believe that the video had been released merely as part of a “propaganda” move. Some even argued that the clip wasn’t real and had been artificially generated to shush the masses, further stirring the “Coffeegate” debate online.
Disclaimer: The content in this article is based on a viral social media discussion and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only.
UPDATE: After the video attained mega-viral status on the internet, Israel’s Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, firmly dismissed the “death” rumours at a press conference. Also affirming that the coffee shop video was real, he said, “Prime Minister Netanyahu is alive. I saw him personally when I was in Israel more than once. This video at the cafe is not AI-fabricated. There is a lot of disinformation.” He blamed the amplification of the speculative debate on the “Iranian side” and other “accomplices” fuelling rumours that were baseless.
What was in Netanyahu’s coffee shop video?
Netanyahu appears to be blatantly playing around with the rumours of his death in the video posted on Sunday. Google translates the Hebrew caption of his Instagram video post to “They say I am what?” in English.
Then, the clip shows him joking with an aide, as he responds with a pun on the word “dead,” which in Hebrew slang is also used to talk about “being crazy about” someone or something, according to Reuters. Reaching out for his coffee cup, the Israeli PM tells the aide, “I’m crazy about coffee. You know what? I’m crazy about my people.” Some international reports have even loosely translated his message to “I’m dying for coffee,” again highlighting his play on words to respond to the death rumours.
‘Coffee somehow goes above the cup line’: Netizens claim ‘video looks AI-generated’
Some eagle-eyed, self-presumed online detectives are calling the video out for being AI-generated, and even Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok appears to agree with how certain X users are dissecting the clip.
Seeking to make their point about why the video appears to be AI-made, certain comments on X claimed that Netanyahu’s coffee seemingly stayed at the same level despite him taking a big sip out of the cup. They also claimed to have noted that the coffee art was not disturbed even after the leader had sipped some of the beverage.
When certain users relied on Grok to make up their mind about the issue, the AI chatbot simply nodded along. “Yes, this video looks AI-generated. The latte foam design and coffee level stay completely unchanged across the clip, even after the apparent sips mentioned—real liquid would shift or drop noticeably. That’s a common giveaway in deepfakes. The speech mixing casual coffee chat with politics feels off too. Not real,” it said under one of the posts on X.
The coffee shop Netanyahu visited on Sunday made its own efforts to dismiss those claims and shared a bunch of pictures on its own Instagram handle to prove the prime minister was, in fact, there at the scene. ‘The Sataf – Jerusalem’ captured multiple snaps of the leader standing both inside and outside the coffee shop. One camera click even focussed on a camera crew filming Netanyahu’s interaction with the cashier, even capturing some delicacies stored inside the shop.
However, some users were still not convinced even after The Sataf’s “proof” sought to back Netanyahu’s post. Some users claim that the cashier appeared to show a “2024 date” in the video, again defending the AI argument, but there was no credible evidence supporting it.
“Coffee somehow goes above the cup line without spilling a drop as he picks it up, coffee amount does not change after he drinks out of it, video jumps frames as he’s moving his arm towards the end of the video,” an Instagram user commented under The Sataf’s post.
“Cafe conveniently posted two days ago that they’re now open on Sundays, people in the background wearing masks look a lot like the people he had with him while campaigning in 2021 when cafes were reopening, while I can see that he might have his pinky under the cup excusing the missing fingernail it’s strange he would filter himself so much and have no wrinkles, sky looks bright and clear while we know what’s happening there, he looks down several times and only blinks once through the entire video towards the end.”
“AI and deep fake checks allege this is not a real video, speculation about dates on the registers and cameras, but sure.”
Another wrote under the post, “How can someone sip coffee, but the latte doesn’t change? How can your cashier screen say March 13, 2024? End this joke, my friend!”
On the contrary, Reuters verified the video’s location from the cafe’s file imagery, thereby matching the interiors of the shop seen in the video. It also stated, “The date was verified from multiple videos and photos of Netanyahu’s visit posted by the cafe on Sunday.”