Millions of Instagram users shared the image "All Eyes on Rafah"

A graphic urging people to pay attention to Israel's continuing battle in Gaza has received over 29 million Instagram shares in less than 24 hours, indicating a reinvigorated social media effort by Palestinian supporters following a deadly Israeli airstrike.

The image shows tents constructed to spell out "All Eyes on Rafah," a refugee camp in southern Gaza where local reports say at least 45 civilians were killed in an Israeli raid on Sunday.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country's parliament in Hebrew that the casualties were a "tragic mishap"; his office provided clarifying comments in English that translated the phrase as "tragic incident."

The photograph has been spread mostly through Instagram's Stories feature, with influencers, athletes, and celebrities like "Bridgerton" star Nicola Coughlan, singer-songwriter Kehlani, and Varun Dhawan, one of India's best actors, all uploading it.

Instagram has risen in recent months as a significant outlet for Palestinian journalists and supporters of Palestinians despite efforts by its owner, Meta, to block the distribution of political content — matching the broader rise of journalistic content on the network.

While the "All Eyes on Rafah" image has spread swiftly, Palestinian journalists' videos from Rafah have been censored and, in some cases, erased from social media due to displaying the terrible aftermath of Israeli strikes. Two of three Instagram postings depicting charred, grievously injured, and dead victims during the latest strike were removed, while one had a sensitive content filter for "graphic or violent content" applied to it. NBC News authenticated the images. An Instagram spokeswoman stated that the firm removed the video because it was violent and explicit, which violated the platform's regulations.

The "All Eyes on Rafah" image does not depict the actual violence taking place on the ground, but it does echo other content that has frequently gone viral and been approved by highly followed people on social media during the last eight months.

"The trend of posting 'All Eyes on Rafah' has been around for a while," said Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst. “We’ve seen quite a lot of influencers and celebrities and widely followed people on multiple platforms, not just Instagram, that are sharing the sentiment of this message or an almost identical version of it, which will amp up the reach and visibility across many platforms.”

The graphic also looks to be one of the first examples of viral activist imagery generated by artificial intelligence. Marc Owen Jones, an associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar who studies misinformation, stated that the image "definitely looks" AI-generated.

The image does not appear photorealistic, it contains strange shadows, and the tent camp depicted is unusually vast and symmetrical – a hint of pattern repetition that is frequent in AI generation.

Pro-Palestinian action on social media has grown at various moments since Israel launched its assault on Gaza following the terrorist attacks on October 7, which killed over 1,100 Palestinians and kidnapped over 200 more. Most recently, a widespread blocking effort against celebrities who have not publicly supported Palestinians gathered traction. Pro-Israel social media activity has also increased at times, most recently in response to university student protests against the conflict. Some prominent figures have publicly defended Israeli civilians, which has sometimes resulted in reaction against them.

Beginning Sunday, Israeli forces advanced on Rafah via land and air, despite global outrage over the resulting civilian casualties. Palestinians inside the tent camp reported dozens of deaths, including small children, some caused by fires that raged across the camp. An Israeli official told NBC News that the fire was sparked by a fuel tank explosion after one of Israel’s bombs hit it.

The account that originally uploaded the "All Eyes on Rafah" photograph on Instagram did not respond to a request for comment.

Instagram's parent company, Meta, has opened its moderation policy board to debates over whether popular pro-Palestinian slogans such as "from the river to the sea" constitutes policy breaches, while simultaneously announcing attempts to prevent the spread of political expression across its platforms. On Meta's Facebook page, AI graphics have received hundreds of millions of interactions.

Navarra said the image demonstrates how activists may use AI to produce material that communicates messages while adhering to platform restrictions. By incorporating text into images, they may avoid any keyword detection moderation given to image captions. AI-generated content can also be created very quickly, compared with traditional digital art methods that take much longer.

“It’s possibly circumventing some of the automated moderation on the platform, because it’s an AI-generated image and there isn’t anything in there that is massively dangerous or controversial,” Navarra said about the “All Eyes on Rafah” image. “It’s interesting to see that this cut through.”