Doctored photo of Pakistani PM with Netanyahu misleads on social media
- Published on October 28, 2025 at 10:20
- 3 min read
- By Masroor GILANI, AFP Pakistan
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As Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif travelled to Egypt to attend a peace conference on the Israel-Hamas war in mid-October, a supposed photo of him meeting Benjamin Netanyahu spread on social media. But he did not meet his Israeli counterpart -- the picture is doctored from Sharif's interaction with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who also attended the summit in Egypt.
"Shehbaz Sharif turned his face with hatred while meeting the murderer of humanity Netanyahu," reads the caption of a Facebook post published October 14, 2025, which shows a picture of Sharif apparently shaking hands with Netanyahu.
The post circulated as Sharif attended an international conference on peace in the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, where he held talks with world leaders such as US President Donald Trump, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (archived link).
The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 Israelis, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures (archived link).
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 68,527 people, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement brokered by US President Donald Trump in October, marking a major step toward ending two years of devastating war (archived link).
The same purported photo of Sharif with Netanyahu surfaced in similar posts on X, Threads and TikTok.
"Shame," wrote one Facebook user, while another commented that it shows a "very critical situation" for the Muslim community.
But there was no such meeting between the two leaders.
Netanyahu was not present at the conference -- the Israeli prime minister declined to attend, citing a Jewish holiday (archived link).
Reverse image and keyword searches on Google found an October 15 X post from Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar sharing a similar picture of Sharif, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (archived link).
"Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif with President of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister of Armenia day before yesterday in Egypt," Tarar wrote on X.
"Some local political elements are trying to distort the video of this meeting and giving a totally false story."
Pakistani media outlet Business Recorder also published a video of Sharif's meeting with Aliyev and Pashinyan on YouTube on October 13. The title says: "PM Shehbaz meets world leaders at Sharm El-Sheikh Summit in Egypt" (archived link).
The doctored photo matches the 13-second mark of the video, which the Pakistani prime minister's office distributed and AFP also received via WhatsApp.
Other shots in the footage indicate the person pictured is Pashinyan. The image shared online was altered to include a ribbon commemorating the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, and the colour of Pashinyan's necktie was changed from deep red to blue (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked other misleading claims linking Israel and Pakistan.
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