On April 14, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Italy had suspended the automatic renewal of its defence cooperation agreement with Israel, citing ‘the current situation.’ The move followed rising tensions after Israeli forces reportedly fired warning shots at an Italian UN peacekeeping convoy in Lebanon on April 8, damaging a vehicle without causing injuries.

In the above context, a video is being widely shared on social media in which Meloni is seen avoiding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handshake gesture during a conference.

In the video, she is also wearing the Palestinian flag. The video is shared with a caption suggesting that Meloni ignored Netanyahu’s friendly gesture amid the rising tension between Israel and Iran. The text embedded in the video reads, “Giorgia Meloni ignoring Netanyahu.”

A social media user shared the video with a caption that reads, “It’s a very delicate situation.”

SouthCheck found that the claim is false. The viral video is AI-generated.

On a Google reverse image search, we could not find any credible source for the video.

Moreover, we found various discrepancies in the video. For example, we noticed that the Arabic text on the right side of the Palestinian scarf is incomprehensible. In the same way, although the inscription on the left side of the flag seems to form a word or message, it is actually merely symbols and rough lines, which are common features of text generated by Artificial Intelligence. Also, we can see that there is a discrepancy in the movements, which looks more robotic than real. All of this suggests that the viral video is AI-generated.

Thus, we checked with the AI-detection tool, DeCopy.ai and found that the viral video is 96 per cent AI-generated.

Moreover, we could not find any reports of Meloni snubbing at Netanyahu. Thus, we can ascertain that the viral claim is false.