Last week, two AI-generated videos circulated in Israel and quickly ignited public debate. One was released by Israel’s science minister, Gila Gamliel, and presented as a call to liberate Iranian women. The other, posted as a direct response by liberal political activist and Democrats list candidate Naor Narkis, applied the same logic to religious women in Israeli politics. At first glance, the exchange looked like a familiar ideological clash. In practice, it revealed a shared blind spot.

Neither video required artificial intelligence. Look-alikes, costumes, and staged filming have long been available tools. What AI changed was speed. It shortened the distance between an idea and a finished image and reduced production costs to almost nothing. The issue, then, is not technological. It is conceptual. These videos reveal how political actors imagine freedom.

In Gamliel’s video, figures resembling Sara Netanyahu, Melania Trump, Yasmin Pahlavi, and Gamliel herself appear wearing a niqab before removing it in a dramatic gesture. The message is clear: this is what the liberation of Iranian women looks like. The niqab, a face veil that covers everything except the eyes, is almost entirely absent in Iran and has even been banned there. The struggle many Iranian women are currently engaged in concerns the compulsory hijab. Beyond the factual error lies a more fundamental failure: freedom is presented........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)