Post shared by 47 million people

AI-generated images depicting tent camps for displaced Palestinians, accompanied by the slogan “Pay attention to Rafah,” have taken social media by storm.

The post has been shared more than 47 million times by Instagram users, including celebrities such as Dua Lipa, Lewis Hamilton, Gigi Hadid, and Bella Hadid.

This image and slogan, Israeli airstrikes and subsequent fires At a camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah earlier this week.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry said at least 45 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the attack. Israel said it targeted two Hamas commanders and that the deadly fire may have been the result of a secondary explosion.

The Israeli attack has drawn widespread international condemnation, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it a “tragic accident.”

After the incident, a young Malaysian man posted the image on his social media account, where it was spotted by BBC Arabic.

So how did this image come about?

The deadly attack in Rafah earlier this week prompted the posting of a video of a speech made in February by Richard Pieperkorn, the World Health Organization's representative in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“All eyes are on Rafah,” he told reporters at the time, warning that Israeli forces would attack the city.

Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters in Geneva, Piperkorn said he feared “unimaginable disaster” if Israel launched a major incursion into the city, which it has threatened to overrun.

Since then, officials and activists have echoed Pieperkorn's comments, voicing concern and opposition to the Israeli military operation in Rafah, which began three weeks ago.

In the months since the phrase was first used, the slogan “Pay attention to Rafah” appeared at rallies and on social media around the world.

But over the past two days, AI-generated images featuring the slogan have proliferated on the social media site, with more than 47 million shares, according to an Instagram tally as of Thursday afternoon.

Other celebrities who shared the image and slogan include American actor Mark Ruffalo, Indian actress Priyanka Chopra and Syrian actress Kinda Alloush.

Experts who spoke to the BBC said there were a number of factors that could explain why the “watch Rafa” message spread so quickly.

These include the fact that the imagery is AI-generated, the simplicity of the slogan, the ease with which Instagram users can share the post with just a few clicks, and celebrity adoption.

But Anastasia Kavada, who runs a Masters in Media, Campaigns and Social Change at the University of Westminster, says the most important factors are the timing and political context of the post.

She explained that the post went viral at a time when many people were feeling “outraged” by news of the attack on the Rafah camp.

This view is echoed by Maher Nammali, an e-marketing and artificial intelligence consultant, who emphasises the nature of the incident itself and the subsequent online interactions.

“Sunday's attack in Rafah caused widespread grief,” he told BBC Arabic.

But experts say the posts themselves contain AI-generated images, which makes them even more shareable.

The image shows a vast desert and a tent camp with the words “All Eyes on Rafah,” but does not depict the actual location or city of Rafah.

Conspicuously absent are bodies, blood, real pictures of people, names, and gory scenes.

This has drawn criticism from some quarters.

Dr Paul Reilly, senior lecturer in communications, media and democracy at the University of Glasgow, said what Gaza journalists post on social media is not widely known and some activists will be concerned the photos do not paint a true picture of what is actually happening on the ground.

Responding to the criticism, the Malaysian artist who created the image, who goes by the username shahv4012, wrote in an Instagram story cited by TIME: “I know some of you are not happy with this image and template. I apologize if I have done any wrong to any of you.”

But he added: [you do]”Please don't downplay the Rafa issue now, spread it around so that they get upset and we all fear it will spread.”

But while the imagery paints a somewhat “clean” picture of what's going on in Rafah, Dr Riley said that from a digital activist perspective it could have an advantage in that it's easy to share.

He said the image did not contain any graphic content that would violate Instagram's terms of service and lead to it being removed, and it also raised awareness of an issue that activists are trying to draw attention to.

Tools developed by Instagram also help posts spread widely.

When “shahv4012” published the photo, he used the “Add Yours” feature, introduced by Instagram in 2021, which allows other users to reshare photos with just a few clicks.

Users can also add their own captions and tags to their posts, making them easy to customize and share.

Nanmari says the use of such features for politics and social movements is a recent trend.

“Most of the time, people who start using it for political reasons are looking to contribute to the launch of a major campaign. [post] snowball [in popularity]” he says.

A small protest movement was started on social media in response to the message “Pay attention to Rafa”.

The image, also created using AI, reads: “Where were your eyes on October 7th?”, a reference to the Hamas attack in southern Israel that left about 1,200 people dead and 252 taken hostage.

The image, reportedly designed by Israeli Instagram user Benjamin Hammon, shows a gunman standing over a baby captured in Gaza.

Israeli media said the image was removed from several accounts and shared around 500,000 times on Hamon's Instagram account before it was banned.

The image has since resurfaced, with Instagram's parent company Meta saying that “the image does not violate our policies” and that they were “working to understand the technical issue” that led to the “mistaken removal” in the instance.

At least 36,170 people have been killed across the Gaza Strip since the conflict began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.