after Israeli airstrike on the Rafah IDP camp in southern Gaza at least 45 people died on Sunday, a post calling for “All eyes on Rafah” went viral on Instagram Stories. However, the photo does not actually show Rafah and appears to have been generated by artificial intelligence.
Despite tens of millions of shares, some social media users criticized the virality a false image that did not provide much context, and compared its reach with real images and infographics about the war in Gaza. Heben Nigatu, a writer and producer, shared the graphic on X and wrote: “I’m really trying to understand why this random AI image from a random donkey account is the post about Gaza that got the most traction? I don’t get it, it’s not even a particularly compelling picture when it comes to artificial intelligence. Like, what am I looking at?”
Nigatu added that it was “very surprising” that a post that refers only to Rafah and not Gaza or Palestine attracted so much attention while the city “is not immediately recognizable to people who did not pay attention.” ” However, she noticed that because the words were in the picture and not typed, the so-called the post may be avoiding keyword censorshipallowing it to spread further.
Meta, the owner of Instagram, did not immediately respond to Quartz’s request for comment on the viral photo.
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, told the Washington Post that the photo probably goes viral because it is a less graphic way of showing awarenesseven if it is a low-level contribution.
“It does not depict real-world violence,” Navarra told The Post. “While it appears sanitized, that is what has allowed it to achieve its level of viral reach to date.”
Hussein Kesvani, a journalist studying digital anthropology in London, shared similar explanations with Vox.
“It’s a memetic moment where people feel like this is the right position and want to voice their opposition,” he told Vox. “It’s an act of bearing witness and saying, ‘This is terrible, I see dead babies on my phone all the time and I wish it would stop.'”
The phrase “All eyes on Rafah” was coined before the Sunday night airstrikes that followed the International Court of Justice ruling ordered Israel to cease its offensive on Rafah. The city has been announced the last “protected” zone in Gaza in February during the Israeli ground offensive in the region, and that’s when the term gained popularity. It probably came from the head of the World Health Organization for Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Rik Pepperkorn, who he said then“All eyes are on Rafah.”
