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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/27/israel-iran-war-propaganda-disinformation/
In Israel, Wartime Reality Doesn't Match What You See on the Internet
(Washington Post) Jennifer Murtazashvili - I wake up every morning in Tel Aviv having survived another day. Sirens go off in the middle of the night. I step onto my balcony and hear the never-ending construction. I moved my husband and four kids to Israel in January for a Fulbright Fellowship, arriving weeks before the war began. We are living through the first alt-war: a conflict in which the war fought online and the war fought in reality have diverged so completely that they might as well be happening on different planets. Most mornings, my phone is full of panicked messages. They have all seen the videos of intense missile barrages ravaging Tel Aviv. One video sent to me featured what were ostensibly Israelis marching in droves, on foot across the Judaean mountains, escaping the country as it collapsed behind them. The videos I've been sent are all fake. They are either generated by artificial intelligence or simply old footage from somewhere else. I know, because I am here. What worries me more than the fake videos are the people who cannot fathom that this war is going well for the U.S., for Israel, and maybe even for the long-suffering people of Iran. Markets know this even when pundits refuse to acknowledge it. Kobby Barda, a political analyst at Holon Institute of Technology, pointed me to the most telling indicator: Israel's stock market surged when the fighting began and has remained near all-time highs. "Markets don't lie," he told me. "Right now they're telling you Israel comes out of this stronger." In the alt-war, Tel Aviv is burning, Washington never heard of the Strait of Hormuz before last week, and the whole enterprise is doomed. Meanwhile, in the real war, Israel, bruised and tired, keeps building toward a better future for itself and the region. The writer is a professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.