Foreign media group slams Israel’s military over AI image of journalist killed in Lebanon strike

An international media association on Wednesday accused the Israeli military of discrediting a Lebanese journalist it killed last month by circulating an AI-generated image of him in Hezbollah fatigues.

Three Lebanese journalists, including Ali Shoeib — a prominent correspondent for the Al-Manar channel — were killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon on March 28.

The Israeli military claimed responsibility for Shoeib’s killing, saying he “operated within the Hezbollah terrorist organisation under the guise of a journalist”.

It provided no evidence to support the allegation, but posted an image on X of Shoeib wearing a press vest, which is partially overlayed with a photoshopped version of the same picture in which he is wearing a Hezbollah uniform.

It captioned the image: “Turns out the ‘press vest’ was just a cover for terror.”

A day later, military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani posted another grainy image on X purporting to show Shoeib in fatigues standing by a tank, writing: “We post this unedited photo this morning of the terrorist Ali Shoeib wearing a Hezbollah uniform.”

He also acknowledged the image released the previous day had been “edited”.

The Foreign Press Association (FPA), representing hundreds of journalists in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said the military had circulated a “fake” image on March 28 to “discredit the journalist”.

“While the army put out a clarification about the photo, it never should have been distributed,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.

“During the recent wars, it has been common practice by the Israeli military to discredit journalists and sow doubt by releasing inaccurate information and raising allegations without providing clear evidence.”

Shoeib was a veteran correspondent for Al Manar TV, who had covered conflicts and politics in Lebanon for decades. More than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed since October 2023 by Israeli fire, the FPA said.

“Israel has claimed some of them were militants, but in numerous cases it provided little or no evidence to support these claims,” the association said, criticising what it described as the “inappropriate use of artificial intelligence” in Shoeib’s case.

In response to a request for comment on the FPA statement, the military pointed AFP to Shoshani’s X post on March 29.

Since the start of a previous round of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in 2023, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the deaths of at least 11 journalists and press workers who were killed by Israel in Lebanon.

Lebanon was pulled into the current Middle East war when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on March 2 in revenge for the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic.

Israel responded with large-scale airstrikes across Lebanon and an invasion in the south.