Social media posts said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hospitalized with a serious illness. That would be news to members of Israel’s Knesset, where Netanyahu spoke Nov. 18.

A Nov. 18 Threads post said "BREAKING: PM NETANYAHU HOSPITALISED. He suffered serious health issue in Kiryah and has been shifted to a hospital in Tel Aviv." It included an image of Netanyahu wearing an oxygen mask in a hospital bed it described as an "archive pic."

We found numerous social media posts shared Nov. 17 and 18 that shared the same words and image on Facebook, Threads, TikTok and X. Some X posts that shared it cited a Telegram post in Hebrew that, according to Google Translate, attributed the claim to unnamed sources but provided no evidence.

The Threads post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

Netanyahu has not recently been hospitalized. We searched Google and Nexis news archives and found no credible news reports that he had. Nor did Netanyahu’s government website or social media accounts include any references to Netanyahu being hospitalized.

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Netanyahu was hospitalized in March, when he had successful hernia surgery at a Jerusalem hospital; he was released April 2.

Netanyahu spoke Nov. 18 in a closed-door session before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Israeli news...

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