Videos authentically show Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wearing a Palestinian flag at a United Nations event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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.
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.
