Does a viral video of Israeli soldiers setting an American flag on fire show a real-life event? No, that's not true: The clip was likely created using AI, probably Sora, whose watermark appeared to have been covered by an emoji of a skull. The flag ends up undamaged despite being set alight, the type of glitch that is characteristic of many AI-generated videos.
The claim appeared in a post published on X on November 25, 2025. The text that accompanied the video read:
America First?
Meanwhile, a group of Israeli soldiers are literally celebrating while an American flag burns.
Nothing exposes the hypocrisy faster than this moment.
Here is what a thumbnail from the attached video looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/SilentlySirs)
A reverse image search showed that the earliest available variation of the clip was posted by an account on TikTok (archived here) which labeled the video as AI content:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@naksu_ah)
The most telling sign pointing to AI was the flag's behavior: It did not get burned after being exposed to fire.
The thumbnail gallery below shows what was happening to it:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of thumbnail gallery from video at tiktok.com/@naksu_ah, produced via InVid)
And, yet, the final frame demonstrates almost no damage to the fabric:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of thumbnail from video at tiktok.com/@naksu_ah, produced via InVid)
The fire itself somehow dramatically split into two fireballs only to become one whole again seconds later:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@naksu_ah)
Additionally, the man holding a gun had differently shaped hands, neither of which was anatomically correct:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at tiktok.com/@naksu_ah)
