By Pascal Ibe
Wildfires raging near Israeli’s Jerusalem on Wednesday forced evacuations across several communities and triggered the closure of major roads, including Route 1, the key highway linking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Firefighters have been battling to contain the flames amid dry conditions and strong winds, as Israel declared a national emergency and appealed for international support.
According to CNN, the fires broke out on Israel’s Memorial Day, compounding the chaos as thick smoke engulfed the area.
Videos shared on social media captured scenes of residents walking along highways under a blanket of smoke.
Claim
Regarding this, an X account, @PakistanMilita posted a video showing the huge fire raging across cities and attributed it to the wildfires in Israel.
The X user shared the video with a caption that reads, “Israel declares a state of emergency as the fire engulfs it.🔥🔥🔥
The post has already generated over 543k views and more than 14k likes on X.
Verification
First, FACTWATCH Nigeria discovered that this clip was circulated in January during the outbreak of the California wildfires.
However, when keyframes from the video were subjected to the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, it showed that the keyframes from the video were AI-generated.
The first keyframe shows Power lines passing through trees.
In the scenes showing the movement of police cars, the motion of the vehicles is unnaturally uniform, which is more characteristic of computer graphics than real movement.
Verdict
This claim is FALSE.
Investigations indicated this AI-generated video first surfaced online in January 2025, and it was recycled again as wildfires broke out in Israel recently.
