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By Mascha Wolf and Sofia Rubinson
What happened: Anti-Israel social media accounts are claiming that a survivor of the deadly attack on the Jewish community in Sydney, Australia, was a “crisis actor,” pointing to two photos as supposed proof. “Crisis actor” is a term used by conspiracy theorists to allege that someone is an actor paid to deceive the public by posing as a victim to a tragic event.
Context: On Dec. 14, two gunmen opened fire at a crowd celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney. At least 15 people were killed and 40 people hospitalized, according to news reports.
Arsen Ostrovsky, head of the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, was among those injured, sustaining a grazing bullet wound to the head.
A closer look: In the aftermath of the attack, anti-Israel and antisemitic social media users spread an authentic image of Ostrovsky with blood on his face, along with a response from X’s AI tool Grok to a question about the authenticity of the image. Grok’s response said, “Yes, the image appears staged.” Some social media users also circulated an AI-generated image created by Google’s Nano Banana Pro model showing...
An appellate court has shut the door on reviewing the constitutionality of the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA), although two other appellate courts are reviewing this issue, with ...