Video of Israelis begging Iran for mercy is AI-generated
- Published on June 25, 2025 at 16:21
- 4 min read
- By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia
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US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire in the Iran-Israel conflict after nearly two weeks of war during which American bombers also struck Iranian nuclear sites. While Israel and Iran were trading missile strikes, a video was shared on Facebook in Ethiopia purporting to show Israelis begging Iran for mercy. However, this is false: the video was created with an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
The post published on Facebook on June 19, 2025, contains an Amharic text overlay that reads: “The Israeli people beg Iran in this manner.”
The post has been shared more than 5,200 times and received more than 5,400 comments.
The post contains a 16-second video with two segments in which people appear to call on Iran to end the attacks against Israel.
“Iran please stop, it is enough,” says a woman speaking in English, with tears in her eyes. “We have nothing left. Our homes, our dreams, everything has been destroyed.” The woman is holding an Iranian flag and wearing a headband with the Israeli flag.
The video then jumps to a group of people standing in a street. Two men and a woman hang their heads. The woman, who is holding a sign with Hebrew text, tearfully says, in English: “We are sorry! We apologise to the people of Gaza.”
In the comments under the video, which are mainly in Amharic, most people appear to believe the video is genuine.
“Iran is determined this time. It does not seem to stop the attack although Israelis are frightened and begged for mercy in this manner,” reads one comment.
“If you had asked your government to stop it when Gazan children were brutally massacred, you would have not faced this tragedy,” says another.
Fragile ceasefire
Israel launched airstrikes against Iran on June 13, 2025, hitting nuclear and military sites as well as residential areas, prompting swift retaliation from Iran.
While Iran and Israel have been in a shadow war against each other for decades, this has been by far the most destructive confrontation between the arch-foes.
The war has also seen US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, followed by an Iranian missile launch aimed at the largest US military facility in the Middle East -- Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar (archived here).
On June 24, Trump announced a truce between Iran and Israel (archived here).
However, the video purporting to show Israelis begging Iran to end attacks against their country is fabricated.
AI-generated video
Several glitches typical of AI are noticeable in the video.
For example, in the second segment, when the man on the left wipes his eyes, his glasses briefly disappear and reappear.
Then, the faces of the people in the background on the far right of the screen morph when they move.
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video.
The search results for the first segment of the video showed that it was published on YouTube with better resolution on June 18, 2025, one day before it was shared on Facebook (archived here).
The YouTube version has a clear “Veo” watermark in the bottom right corner. The same watermark can also be seen in the viral video, but due to the lower resolution, it is not very clear.
Veo is Google’s new AI-powered video creation tool. The tool allows users to generate realistic-looking videos that are currently a maximum of eight seconds in length (archived here). The clip shared on Facebook is exactly eight seconds long.
Similarly, the search results for the second segment revealed that it was also created using Veo.
The clip was published on YouTube in higher resolution on June 18, 2025, with a clear “Veo” watermark in the bottom right corner (archived here).
This clip, again, is exactly eight seconds long.
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