Yes, Israeli settlers are ripping up West Bank olive trees – but this video is fake

Palestinian olive groves are regularly targeted in the occupied West Bank. This year, the olive harvest was marked by numerous acts of settler violence aimed at Palestinian farmers. Israeli Army bulldozers ripped out olive trees in places like Deir Nizam, a village in the centre of the West Bank, as shown by photos taken by the news agency Reuters in late September. 

Since October 14, a video claiming to show olive trees that Israel allegedly ripped up in the West Bank has been circulating on X. The footage shows bulldozers destroying the trees.

The video, which was circulated by accounts displaying pro-Palestinian positions, garnered more than 200,000 views across a number of X posts. The video was also shared – before later being taken down – by the Palestinian Authority's communications team, as noted open source investigator Tal Hagin. It was also shared by the Palestinian ambassador in the Ivory Coast and by the Palestinian media outlet Quds.

A fake video whose origin has been concealed  

The video, however, is a fake. When we put it into SynthID – the Google tool that makes it possible to detect images generated by artificial intelligence – the result revealed a watermark on the video indicating that it was produced by Gemini, Google's chatbot.  The result of the SynthID test on the video.

It also appears that the video's creator wanted to hide the video's artificial origin. An image of a thumbs up has been pasted to the bottom right corner – exactly where the Gemini watermark usually appears. At left is an image produced by Gemini. The small diamond in the bottom right corner is Gemini's watermark. At right is the fake video of olive trees being destroyed: the image of a thumbs up has been pasted on top of the spot where Gemini's watermark usually sits.

Anomalies common in AI-generated content   

The video also features a number of anomalies common in content generated by artificial intelligence. AI still often struggles to correctly depict specific details. 

For example, the shovel on one of the diggers seems to change throughout the video. Initially, it seems to, strangely enough, have spikes on it. Three seconds in, it starts to look normal again.  At left: in the first second of the video, one of the shovels on one of the diggers appears to have spikes on it. At right: the shovel on the same digger looks normal, later in the video.

Another anomaly appears in the background of the video when an olive tree falls to the ground before the digger strikes it.  This fake video of olive trees being ripped up was shared online on October 14, 2026. If you look at the footage, one olive tree (marked in blue) falls before the bulldozer actually touches it.

At least 100,000 olive trees have been destroyed, ripped out or burned in the West Bank since 2023, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture.