Naftali Bennett Sparks Online Debate Over Startup Photo Date Discrepancy

Former Israeli Prime Minister and "Yahad" party leader Naftali Bennett shared a personal social media post recounting the early days of his tech career. He described how in the summer of 1999, while a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he and his partners founded their first startup, Saiota, from a modest student apartment in Jerusalem. Bennett emphasized that at the time they had big dreams and plans but no money, surviving on student jobs.

However, shortly after the post went viral, social media users shifted focus from Bennett's nostalgic story to a notable inconsistency in the attached photo. Although Bennett's narrative places the scene in summer 1999, a yellow timestamp in the bottom left corner of the image clearly reads "February 94," creating a five-year chronological gap that sparked widespread skepticism and ridicule online.

Further scrutiny revealed another anomaly: in the bottom right corner of the photo, a graphic mark indicated digital editing using Google's AI tool Gemini. This discovery added to the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the image. As of now, Bennett's posts remain online despite the debate they have generated.