Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro addressed a claim making its way around social media Thursday that attempted to falsify the disturbing photos showing how Hamas burned Israeli babies.
Shapiro shared the disturbing image of a burned Israeli baby on his show and on X on Thursday, revealing the inhuman lengths Hamas terrorists went to in their attack against the Jewish people. Shortly after the photo circulated on the platform, anti-Israel writer Max Blumenthal and Vladimir Putin-apologist YouTuber Jackson Hinkle attacked Shapiro for sharing the image and alleged it was AI-generated.
Shapiro slammed the “gullible dupes” for believing and spreading the idea that the image was fake and for “involving themselves in propagandistic efforts to deceive themselves.” The Daily Wire host said on his show that his post of the disturbing image was “community-noted,” which means authorized contributors added so-called “missing context” to the post. In this case, the community note “claimed that the photo was AI-generated,” Shapiro said.
“The photo was obviously not AI-generated. It clearly was not AI-generated,” Shapiro added.
Indeed, X removed the community note from Shapiro’s post, and the posts claiming the image was AI-generated received community notes confirming it is “a real photo.”
The image of the scorched baby was first released by the Israeli government and confirmed by local reports and eyewitness accounts of first responders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also shared the image, along with a photo of the bloodied body of another dead baby, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Here are some of the photos Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken,” Netanyahu’s office said in a post on X. “Warning: These are horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters.”
“Hamas is inhuman,” his office said. “Hamas is ISIS.”
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The Daily Wire host said that those spreading the claim that the photo of the dead baby was AI-generated are attempting to “both sides” the war in Israel because “that’s always the easiest position.”
“In any given conflict, it’s always very very easy to say, ‘Both sides, both sides.’ The problem is that in this particular case, it’s pretty obvious that it ain’t both sides. But if you want to ‘both sides’ this thing, you have to say that ‘The atrocities weren’t so bad, the atrocities don’t really matter.’”
Shapiro then explained how the narrative of AI-generated photos gaining traction shows how important the “propaganda war” is when dealing with radical Islamic terrorists such as Hamas.
“The propaganda wars — Hamas is fighting them right now — and they’re are a lot of gullible dupes out there who want to believe [the propaganda],” said Shapiro, adding that most of those who buy into the propaganda have a “lack of understanding” but many people “actually just hate Jews and [are] perfectly fine with them being slaughtered.”