In March 2026, a widespread rumor circulated online that an Iranian missile attack killed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The claim gained traction even after Netanyahu gave a video address on March 12.
Snopes readers asked us to confirm whether the Israeli prime minister was dead or alive. Numerous posts even featured footage purportedly from Netanyahu's recorded address, claiming it was generated by artificial intelligence software as he allegedly had six fingers on one hand instead of five (archived).
One Facebook video claimed to show "grief inside Israeli underground bunkers amid Netanyahu's death." A TikTok video claimed Netanyahu's alleged death was a result of Iranian missiles.
There was no evidence the Israeli prime minister was killed by an Iranian missile strike. On March 12, he spoke at a news conference that was broadcast live on X as well as by multiple media outlets. The claim that Netanyahu had six fingers in one video also misrepresents the footage, as we previously reported. Netanyahu posted a clip of himself in a café to debunk the rumor. Because of this, we've rated this claim false.
We have reached out to the Israeli government for comment and will update this post if we receive a response.
The rumor appeared to originate from reports by Tasnim News Agency, an Iranian media outlet believed to be affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. On March 9, the media agency's English-language X account posted the following:
Unverified social media claims alleging that Iran bombed the home of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and killed his brother, while wounding National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have circulated widely online following comments by former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter.
Ritter, who describes himself as a former U.S. Marine and intelligence officer on his X profile, made the above claim on March 9 on RT, a Russian state-backed media outlet.
According to a March 10 article on Tasnim's website, Netanyahu was either severely injured or dead due to the following factors. The article noted that the Israeli government had neither confirmed nor denied the factors:
1. It has been nearly three days since the last video of Netanyahu was posted on his personal channel, and almost four days since the last images of him were published. Following that, the few statements attributed to Netanyahu have been text-based.
2. Prior to the last video of Netanyahu, at least one video, and sometimes up to three videos, were typically released daily. However, the absence of even a single video over the past three days has intensified speculation.
3. A number of Hebrew sources reported that on March 8, reports emerged indicating that the security perimeter around Netanyahu's home had been heightened, particularly to counter potential suicide drones.
4. It is said that the cancellation of the planned visit by Jared Kushner ([U.S. President Donald] Trump's son-in-law) and Steve Witkoff (Trump's special representative) to Israel, which was scheduled for today, is related to this situation.
5. The Élysée Palace also did not specify the date of a telephone conversation between French President Emmanuel Macron and Netanyahu in a news report about the call, and only a text of this alleged conversation was released.
We looked at Netanyahu's recent public appearances and social media pages. According to the Israeli government's official website, photographs showed him visiting a port in the city of Ashdod on March 10. A news release included a text-only statement from Netanyahu about the visit.
On March 10, Netanyahu's Instagram account published video of the Israeli prime minister speaking, claiming to show him visiting Israel's National Health Command Center. Photographs of the visit appeared on his official Facebook page. According to the government website, Netanyahu made the visit on March 9.
On the evening of March 12, Netanyahu spoke during a news conference that was broadcast live on X by the official Israeli governmental press office account, as well as on YouTube by media outlets including Al Jazeera English. Netanyahu addressed Israel's citizens, saying the nation was "stronger than ever."
On March 15 and March 16, Netanyahu's official Instagram account posted videos of him at a café and interacting with other people. In the footage, the Israeli prime minister poked fun at the rumor of his death, using Hebrew slang for "being crazy about" something or someone which could also be a pun for the word death.
"I'm crazy about coffee. You know what? I'm crazy about my people," he said, according to Reuters' translation. He even held up his hand to show the number of fingers on it. The video was recorded at the HaSataf café in Jerusalem, which also posted pictures of Netanyahu from behind the scenes, showing this was authentic footage and not AI-generated.
Hany Farid — a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in digital forensics and image analysis — also analyzed Netanyahu's video and the photographs released by the coffee shop. He told Snopes that his team found no evidence of synthetic content in either the audio or video, nor did he find evidence of manipulation or AI generation in the images.
Israeli media outlet The Jerusalem Post called the rumors of Netanyahu's death a "false conspiracy theory" in a March 10 article, saying, "The piece fits a familiar pattern in Iranian and pro-Iranian information warfare, with real fragments of public information stitched together into a dramatic narrative, then circulated as if they point to a hidden event."
There also was no evidence an Iranian strike killed or injured either Netanyahu's brother, Iddo Netanyahu, or Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, who published a video on his official TikTok account stating he was alive.
Snopes has covered death hoaxes about numerous public figures during wars and conflicts, including hoaxes about Russian President Vladimir Putin.