Daily conspiracy

[Fake Messiah]

Unfortunately, this kind of conspiracy is pretty much a routine around any (modern) war - for example in Ukraine.

Pallywood: It’s one of the most powerful conspiracy theories in the world. There’s a reason so many believe it.

The term Pallywood—a portmanteau of Palestine and Hollywood—stems from a long-standing claim that Palestinians fabricate their suffering for cameras, using actors, dolls, or staged scenes to smear Israel. It offers an all-purpose, ready-made excuse to dismiss even the most well-documented atrocities, sowing just enough doubt to ignore Palestinian suffering entirely.

This conspiracy has been around for years, but mentions of Pallywood spiked dramatically after Oct. 7, 2023, far surpassing previous peaks for the term during past Israeli military offensives in Gaza and the West Bank. Beyond Israel, Pallywood has gained traction in right-wing circles worldwide, particularly in the U.S. and India. One of the most grotesque examples came in December 2023, when a wave of pro-Israel accounts—including the official @Israel handle, the Jerusalem Post, and influencers like Ben Shapiro—amplified the claim that a grieving Palestinian man, seen in a widely shared video cradling his killed baby grandson, was faking it. “Hamas accidentally posted a video of a doll (yes a doll),” the @Israel account wrote in a post that was viewed more than 1.3 million times. Others—including StopAntisemitism, Hen Mazzig, and Yoseph Haddad, echoed the claim to millions more. “Pallywood 🤣,” delighted Eli David.

In truth, the baby, 5-month-old Muhammad Hani al-Zahar, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The supposed “doll” these accounts amused over was his body. The Jerusalem Post eventually retracted its article. But by then, the damage was done. The lie didn’t need to hold up under scrutiny—it confirmed what many were already primed to believe.

Few have done more to promote the Pallywood myth than Richard Landes, a medievalist and historian of apocalyptic movements who coined the term. In his most recent book, 2022’s Can “the Whole World” Be Wrong?, he argues that Western journalists are unwittingly reporting Palestinian propaganda as legitimate news (a phenomenon he calls “lethal journalism”), rendering them complicit in spreading antisemitic narratives under the guise of human-rights reporting. The book expands on the idea of Pallywood as an intricate, evolving system of staged deception designed to manipulate global opinion against Israel.

He pointed to Gazawood, a crowdsourced website and X account that compiles what it claims are Pallywood slipups—supposed bad edits, recurring actors, makeup mistakes. The account frequently shares videos of dead Palestinian babies, speculating that they might be fake. “If you pause the footage and look closely, you’ll see other people in the background who were smiling at the performance,” Landes added, referencing videos like this one.

Laila Al-Arian, an Emmy- and Peabody-winning investigative journalist and executive producer of Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, has spent the months since October 2023 reporting on Gaza. Her feed is flooded with footage of bombed homes, bloodied children, frantic rescue efforts—as well as accusations that it’s all fake.

“It’s everywhere on my Twitter,” she told me. To her, the concept of Pallywood is no more credible than the “crisis actor” conspiracy theories used to deny mass shootings in America, like the one at Sandy Hook. “Facts don’t matter. They’re inventing stories to discredit what’s right in front of them: suffering, atrocities, death,” she said.

These days, when Palestinians post TikToks documenting life in a locked-off war zone, many Israelis begin from a baseline of disbelief. “ ‘Why are they baking cakes if they’re starving?’ ‘How are they making polished videos if they’re under siege?’ ” Divon said, explaining the reasoning. The rise of A.I. has only deepened public skepticism, making it feel increasingly plausible that any image or video, no matter how realistic, could be fake.

https://slate.com/technology/2025/05/isr...ywood.html

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Meanwhile

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson doubles down on 9/11 conspiracy theories

Speaking with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, Johnson, R-Oshkosh, said his interest in the attack on New York City, particularly regarding Building 7, a 47-story office building that fell several hours after planes were flown into the nearby Twin Towers, is “because the 9/11 families want to know the answer.”

“I’m just as prone as everyone else to go, ‘Well, that’s wacko. That’s a conspiracy,’” Johnson said. “But then you start getting the information and you start going, ‘Wow, is that weird.’”

“Building number 7 — you see it come down — and we’ve all watched, because it’s cool to watch these buildings being demolished, boom, just freefall,” Johnson said. “The only way that happens is if you remove all of their supports at the same time. You blow them all out so a building can really free-fall. If it’s collapsing from something else, it’s like, you know, you build like a fire, and it collapses off to the side or something, right?”

Speaking with conservative radio host Meg Ellefson a day later, Johnson again cited the 2020 film “Calling Out Bravo 7,” a production he’s referenced in the past that questions the official story behind the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 in New York.

“And as we find out, in so many different instances, you really can’t trust the government what they told you,” Johnson said. “I mean, the government has just repeatedly lied to the American public for decades on so many different issues. It’s sad. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.”

Johnson’s latest comments come about a month after the the Oshkosh Republican told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson he believes there are “an awful lot of questions” surrounding one of the deadliest attacks on the United States.

https://madison.com/news/state-regional/...6b4c0.html