Nobody “gets” misinformation like Israelis.
There’s a certain dark comedy to scrolling through your morning news feed and seeing your entire country portrayed as either cartoon villains or tragic heroes, depending on how the algorithm has decided to curate your reality that day. Most of us have developed a kind of immunity to it, a psychological shield that forms after years of watching our lives get filtered through someone else’s political agenda.
It’s one thing to wake up every day and see the fake news being spread about your people, but it’s another sensation entirely to see the media spouting nonsense about you specifically.
That is exactly what happened to Amit Ramot, a 25-year-old from a town I will not name, as it also happens to be my town, and Amit happens to be my friend.
Ramot, a born comedian, didn’t think anything in particular when she posted a video of herself struggling to carry a refrigerator up some stairs – ultimately failing and dropping it on her legs. But within hours, Ramot’s lighthearted post had been stripped of its context and transformed into something entirely different.
Ramot’s original video had all the makings of a perfect Internet moment: physical comedy, relatable domestic struggles, and just enough schadenfreude to make everyone feel better about their own lives. Instead, it was turned into a geopolitical incident faster than you could double tap.
Fabricated narratives
Across anti-Zionist social media channels, the video began circulating with a fabricated narrative: Viewers were told they were watching a man being crushed by a refrigerator while attempting to enter a home “seized from Palestinians.”
It was the world’s most politically charged game of broken telephone, except everyone along the chain decided to deliberately mishear everything and add their own spin. The fact that they managed to change her gender, her motivation, her legal status, and apparently her survival rate (for the record, she is fine) shows a level of dedication to fiction that, honestly, makes me a little bit jealous.
Just like that, personal property became stolen land. An accident became justice. And a moment of everyday humor became a weapon in an ideological war.
“Honestly, it really amused me how things snowballed into this; and precisely because it’s for the wrong reasons, I found it even funnier,” Ramot told me.
She explained that her mother had happened to be filming outside when she dropped the fridge and, always the first to laugh at herself, Ramot uploaded the video to social media.
Social media attacks
The video was quickly picked up by the likes of Al Jazeera, Gaza Now, and other anti-Zionist spheres, with the story being spun to change every little detail in a manner befitting Theseus’s ship.
One anti-Israel subreddit posted the video mocking Ramot’s injury, saying the fridge was “getting revenge” for the Palestinians she had stolen from.
There’s something deeply unserious about living in a world where major appliances are being recruited into ideological warfare; but here we are, watching people cheer for Team Refrigerator like it’s some kind of cosmic wrestling match.
“Hamas must be hiding in the fridge, 100%,” one commenter wrote.
“This long-lasting back pain was promised to him 3,000 years ago,” another responded.
Ramot, however, has years of experience letting these types of messages roll off her back. In her personal life, only one person reacted in a negative way, while the rest of her circle only laughed along with her.
Ramot's response
This might be the most Israeli response possible: international incident? Whatever. One random person being mean? Also whatever. The entire Internet convinced you’ve broken both legs and your back, and also that you deserved it? Let’s grab coffee and laugh about it. There’s something beautiful about having a social circle that responds to global misinformation with collective shrugging and humor.
“There was a brief moment when I worried about my family’s safety, when an Arab who was working nearby filmed the staircase, saying he was excited because this was where ‘the fridge video’ was shot,” she admitted, adding that thankfully, nothing came from the incident.
Shortly after the incident, Ramot sat down with Channel 12 to tell her story, and the network offered her support and assistance if she chooses to pursue a defamation claim against Al Jazeera or any of the other platforms.
“I haven’t yet tried to reach out to the platforms, that’s still under consideration,” she said. “Mostly, I’m still just astonished how easily fake news can be manufactured out of nothing at all.”
Her astonishment is understandable but also kind of endearing in its innocence. In 2025, being shocked that fake news can be manufactured out of nothing is like being surprised that water is wet or that politicians lie. The fact that she’s considering legal action against major media outlets over a “fail video” pretty much sums up where we are as a civilization.
The new world order
Ramot’s case illustrates how easily authentic content can be repurposed to serve false narratives, particularly in contexts where audiences are primed to believe certain stories.
What Ramot’s refrigerator adventure really demonstrates is that we’ve all become characters in other people’s stories, whether we like it or not. In a world where everyone has a camera and an agenda, your worst moving day can become someone else’s political victory, your clumsiest moment can become evidence of cosmic justice, and your kitchen appliance can become a freedom fighter.
It’s simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, which is probably the most accurate description of life in Israel two years into the Israel-Hamas War that anyone has managed yet.