What was claimed
The Daily Mail has published an article about a street artist painting a mural depicting Benjamin Netanyahu as Hitler after being commissioned by a “Zionist group” to celebrate Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
Our verdict
This is not a real article published by the Daily Mail. It was created by an Australian street artist as satire and there’s no evidence these events occurred.
A screenshot that appears to show a Daily Mail article about a public mural depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Hitler has been shared online. But this is not a genuine article published by the outlet and was created as satire by an Australian artist. There’s no evidence the events outlined in the satirical article actually occurred.
The posts share an image featuring photos, a byline and standfirst in the format of a Daily Mail article dated 4 August 2025. It shows a genuine photo of Hitler alongside what appears to be a mural on the side of a building depicting Mr Netanyahu posing in the same stance and wearing similar attire—including an armband featuring an Israeli flag instead of a swastika—with explosions in the background.
The supposed standfirst reads: “Zionist group says they were ‘deceived’ by artist Scottie Marsh after commissioning $20,000 mural to celebrate Gaza offensive only to receive Hitler-inspired street art.” Bullet points summarising the article quote a Rabbi supposedly describing the mural as a hate crime, and say the mural was removed following “outrage from Sydney’s Jewish community”.
This screenshot has been shared widely on social media with captions including: “Old mate Scott Marsh pulls a swifty on a Zionist group that couldn't be funnier”.
But the Daily Mail confirmed to Full Fact that this article has not been published by the outlet. We could find no such article on its website, either in the UK or Australia, or any articles written by the supposed journalist, Moss Adman, which appears to be a reference to Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
Australian street artist Scott Marsh was the first to share the fake article, which refers to him as “Scottie Marsh” and says he painted the mural. The image he shared included the Daily Mail banner at the top, which was cropped out of versions shared elsewhere on social media.
After Full Fact contacted Mr Marsh, he shared a photo on his Instagram of the ‘mural’ on canvas in a studio. In the caption he said: “I knew this work could not exist as a mural. In the unlikely event I finished it, the mural would be imediately [sic] destroyed.”
He continued that he “decided to deliver this work as a satirical news article in hopes of giving this image enough velocity to escape my funnel and find a global audience. The motivation wasn’t to decieve [sic] but jump the guardrails and beat the censors - and it worked!”
The satirical article says the mural was commissioned by a group called the “Waverley Zionist Alliance (WZA)”, which it says is painted on “Goldstein Deli in Bondi Junction”, and quotes a WZA spokesperson named Miriam Levy. We could find no evidence of there being any such group, or a venue called Goldstein Deli in Sydney.
We also couldn’t find any credible reports of any such mural being painted on a building in Sydney depicting Mr Netanyahu in this way.
The Daily Mail did publish an article referring to Scott Marsh’s fake article, and how an Australian broadcaster reportedly shared it on social media before later realising it wasn’t real.
This is not the first time we’ve seen satirical content being taken out of context on social media, including a viral video of a woman claiming her 14-month-old baby is transgender and an AI image allegedly showing a statue of Roald Dahl resembling sex offender Jimmy Saville.
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because this is not a genuine Daily Mail article, and was created as satire by an Australian artist.
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