Trump's Gaz-a-Lago AI video post has outraged Arabs, while emboldening Israelis

The Arab League is holding an emergency summit meeting in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss a plan for the reconstruction of Gaza. They have emphatically rejected the U.S. Criminal-in-Chief Donald Trump's idea that the U.S. should take over Gaza and redevelop it into a "Riviera of the Middle East" with its 2.1 million residents displaced into Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries.

Reuters reported Monday that Egypt had drawn up a plan for Gaza as a counter to Trump's imagined Middle East Riviera. The Egyptian plan would "sideline Hamas and replace it with interim bodies controlled by Arab, Muslim and Western states," according to a draft seen by Reuters.

Arab leaders were outraged and blindsided by Trump's proposal. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt emboldened. Over the weekend, Israel blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza to pressure Hamas into accepting new terms for an extension of the cease-fire agreement after its initial phase expired. That leaves more Gazans threatened by death from exposure and starvation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio slouched in the couch and sat stone-faced Friday as Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, threatening to cut off military aid to Ukraine.

But The New York Times reported that over the weekend Rubio invoked "emergency authorities" to bypass review by Congress and send $4 billion in weapons to Israel. Rubio said the Trump administration would “continue to use all available tools to fulfill America’s longstanding commitment to Israel’s security, including means to counter security threats.”

The Times cited a Pentagon announcement with an announcement of the details of the arms sale to Israel, indicating that it would include thousands more 2,000-pound bombs. The Biden administration had halted shipment of these 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, but the Trump administration resumed shipments of these munitions last month. It's those 2,000-pound bombs that have enabled Israel to pound Gaza into rubble, killing and wounding tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Netanyahu released a video statement on Monday in which he thanked Trump "for his unwavering support for Israel" and called him "the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House."

Netanyahu continued:

He has shown it through his visionary plan for Gaza, this is a plan which Israel fully supports.

He's shown it by sending us all the munitions that were being held up. This way he is giving Israel the tools we need to finish the job against Iran’s terror axis.

Given the international outrage, Trump could have walked back his proposal, made Feb. 4 at a joint White House news conference with Netanyahu, of turning Gaza into an ethnically cleansed Mediterranean Riviera. But instead he doubled down on his mad fantasy last Tuesday by sharing on his Truth Social platform and Instagram a grotesque, 33-second AI-generated video depicting a dystopian Gaz-a-Lago resort.

Here's how Rolling Stone described the video:

"Gaza 2025: What's Next?" The video asks, before launching into a montage of AI slop clips depicting bloody rubble transforming into a Dubai-esque riviera, highlighted by the "Trump Gaza" resort. Children frolick in the streets holding golden balloons in the shape of Trump's head, and amorphous humanoids purchase golden figurines of the American president and stroll around a plaza dominated by a giant - you guessed it - golden statue of Trump. Yachts, skyscrapers, belly dancing women (with beards!), and luxury cars abound. 

The video also depicts Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounging shirtless, drinks in hand, at the "Trump Gaza" hotel pool. Elon Musk is also featured heavily, scarfing down food on a beach and dancing in a rain of money. 

Throughout the video, a backing track proclaims: "Donald is coming to set you free / Bringing the light for all to see / No more tunnels, no more fear / Trump Gaza is finally here." 

Here's the video with commentary from The Guardian:

On Friday, NBC News identified the creators of the controversial video as Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen, two of the co-founders of Los Angeles-based EyeMix Visuals, which partly uses AI to create commercials and promotional media. The two are originally from Israel, but now live in the U.S.

Avital told NBC that their team was trying to create a video with a quick turnaround as a pilot project to experiment with an A.I. software called Arcana. They didn't decide on their topic until Trump announced his bizarre idea for Gaza's future under U.S. control. Avital told NBC that the video was intended as "a little satire."

Vromen told NBC that he was in Las Vegas when Trump made his proposal. “The idea was like, how Trump wants to turn Gaza into Vegas,” Vromen said. “We wanted to have an internal laugh about it. It was a joke.”

Some joke!

The duo completed the video on Feb. 6., briefly posted it on Instagram, and shared it with a limited group of people, including Mel Gibson, whom Trump has appointed as a special ambassador to Hollywood.

NBC News found several pro-Israel social media accounts that shared the video in the days after Vromen posted it. The video would have sunk into the cesspool of AI-generated fake videos on social media, but then Trump shared it without comment on his Truth Social platform and Instagram.

The duo told NBC that they are not sure how their video was brought to Trump's attention. Vromen said it was not their intent for the video "to be a propaganda machine."

But Vromen did say he considered Trump's Gaza plan to be "one of the few forward-thinking policy proposals that could address a longstanding stalemate in the region."

 And he added that the bearded dancers in the video were meant to be a "disrespectful" portrayal of Hamas members, pointing to Israeli outrage over Hamas' handling of the return of the bodies of dead hostages.

“The real intention of this specific piece — I thought that Gaza will be so liberated that it will become woke,” Avital told NBC.

Avital said he was shocked when three weeks later Trump posted it on Truth Social and Instagram with no caption. 

Avital said he never imagined that the president would post a video with scenes showing him dancing with a woman in a club who wasn't his wife or depicted in a giant golden statue "like some sort of a dictator." But it's clear that he underestimated the narcissistic criminal now running our country.

Vromen complained to NBC: "Trump has stolen our content because this was made by artists. The Gaza Strip movie is perfect, unique original content that was taken out of context and published by the president of the United States.”

This whole story regarding the Gaz-a-Lago video has left me feeling rather uneasy. That's because I have vivid memories of the reaction to another video posted on YouTube back in September 2012.

It was an Arabic-dubbed version of an anti-Muslim video, titled "Innocence of Muslims." Muslims consider it offensive to depict images of the Prophet Muhammad, and blasphemous to show any sign of disrespect toward the religion's founder.

As The New York Times wrote at the time, the video portrayed the Prophet Muhammad "as a child of uncertain parentage, a buffoon, a womanizer, a homosexual, a child molester and a greedy, bloodthirsty thug."

One of my most challenging experiences as an international news editor at The Associated Press came overnight on Sept. 11-12, 2012, when the video sparked a protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo with some demonstrators scaling the walls and tearing down the American flag. Then hours later, an attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. personnel. Only months later after an extensive investigation was it determined that the Benghazi attack had been planned in advance by a militant Islamic group and was not connected to the video.

But the video did spark protests across the Arab and Muslim world that left dozens dead and hundreds injured. The filmmaker, who initially used a pseudonym and claimed to be an Israeli-American, was revealed to be a Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who had a criminal record in the U.S.

In a Sept. 25, 2012, speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Barack Obama condemned "the crude and disgusting video" and made clear that the U.S. government had nothing to do with it. But he also criticized the "mindless" violent protests related to the film.

But Trump has given his imprimatur to this disturbing AI video that can be seen as putting a smiley face on ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The video so far hasn't set off violent protests, but it could fuel anti-American sentiment in Arab countries and boost support for Hamas and Hezbollah. At the same time, Trump has emboldened right-wing Israeli nationalists.

The Times of Israel reported on an ultranationalist rally on Thursday in which a government minister and several parliament members urged the removal of millions of Palestinians from Gaza.

The newspaper quoted Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman of the ruling Likud party as saying that the only solution for Gaza was “to empty Gaza of Gazans,” and that Israel must “inherit” Jenin and Nablus in the West Bank as well.

The newspaper wrote:

Silman couched her policy proposal as “encouraging emigration,” similar to some speakers at the Jerusalem rally who stopped short of Trump’s call for Palestinians to be forced out of the enclave and never allowed to return. ...

“God sent us Trump,” she added, saying that the White House had said “explicitly to us that the time has come to inherit the land.”

Former National Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose ultranationalist party quit Netanyahu's governing coalition because it opposed the Gaza cease-fire deal, told the rally:

“We were right when we talked about encouraging emigration. Now the president of the most powerful nation in the world is telling us to make the transfer,” he said, referring to Trump.

But Trump's posting of the video outraged Arabs. Newsweek offered a sampling of Arab reaction:

"Man, do you think that a population which faced death for over a year under bombardment, displacement and death can be displaced with your failed plans and words? By God, Gaza will be your graveyard," wrote Omar Hussein, who described himself as a student in Jordan, in a comment on the video. ...

Mohamed Abdo, who describes himself as a digital creator and has over 3,600 followers on Facebook: "No matter how narcissist you become you will not be able to harm Gaza and its land as long its population is standing firm against your damned plans."

Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza. told The New York Times:

“We strongly condemn, in the harshest terms, the disgraceful video published by U.S. President Donald Trump, which contains unethical scenes that violate the customs, morals and traditions of our Palestinian people.” 

CNN quoted Wassel Abu Yousuf, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s executive committee, as saying that the video was “a clowning gimmick and nothing more than that.”

“There will not be resorts or Middle East riviera or anything else,” he said. “What Trump wants to do should be done somewhere else, but not on the backs of the Palestinian people. This is the land of our ancestors and parents, and a lot of blood has been shed to defend it.”

On NBC News, Gaza residents expressed outrage when they were shown the AI-generated video on a cellphone (segment begins at 45-second mark).

A young man said:

"We have lived through hell — 500 days of genocide and displacement and poverty and horrible conditions that even the animals couldn't handle it — and after that he’s coming to control Gaza. No, we’re not going to let you. We are not going to accept that. We will fight you as long as we can."

And perhaps the most poignant response to Trump's sharing the video was this post on Instagram by seen.TV Palestine, a website for Palestinian storytellers and journalists.

In the 30-second video, originally posted on Instagram, a young girl addresses Trump directly:

Hey Donald Trump. It's Tala from Gaza. You said you want to take over Gaza. Take over what? Look around. This is Gaza – bombed houses, the hunger, the destruction, no food, no water, no home.

Gaza is not yours to take. Gaza is ours and we are still here. This is our land. We are its owners and we will never leave it.