Prime Minister Netanyahu throws AI video at opponents to stoke voter anxiety

As Israel’s election season heats up, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government officials are deploying pay-to-play weapons aimed at defeating their political opponents. It’s an AI-generated viral video.

In recent weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his key allies have posted satirical content on social media depicting his main opponents, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, as being manipulated by an Arab-Israeli puppet master.

One viral video posted by the prime minister last week has been viewed more than a million times and was captioned: “Take off your mask.” It depicts Bennett and Lapid smiling and embracing, before peeling off the faces of prominent Arab-Israeli political leaders Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi.

Name: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number pic.twitter.com/IgFDWXp96N

– Benjamin Netanyahu April 29, 2026

After Bennett and Lapid announced in April that they would run jointly against Netanyahu in the fall elections, Israeli political Twitter was flooded with AI-generated content on the subject, criticizing Bennett’s political weaknesses, including his past inclusion of Abbas’s Arab Ra’am party into a coalition government.

One image posted by Netanyahu’s Likud party showed Bennett and Lapid depicted as children sitting obediently in the back seat of Abbas’ car. The photo was captioned: “In any case, Bennett and Lapid will once again be working with the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports terrorism.”

גם ביחד זה ברור – הנהג הוא מנסור.

Name: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number: Number:

और देखें pic.twitter.com/iYFIZQ8QhJ

— ดูเพิ่มเติม April 26, 2026

These AI videos reflect growth since October. Seven trends in Israeli politics: Accusing one’s political opponents of aligning with Arab parties as a means of delegitimizing them.

Dr. Arik Radnitzky, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Israeli Arab Society Program, said the trauma experienced by Israelis after October 7 has left a deep mark on the Jewish public. That fear is now being actively mobilized into political messages, he said.

“The discourse after October 7 is very influential in Israeli politics, and it decides everything,” Rudnitzky said. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smutrich went so far as to say that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s decision to incorporate the Islamist Ra’am party into the 2021-2022 government was worse than the Netanyahu government’s failures related to the October 7 Hamas attack. Despite the fact that Prime Minister Mansour Abbas said that Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to persuade him to join a coalition government in 2021, Netanyahu denied this.

The implicit message, according to Rudnitsky, is that Arab parties in Israel are dangerous. The argument is that they are not Zionists (and some Arab parties are explicitly anti-Zionist). In the aftermath of October 7, some Arab Israeli political leaders condemned violence against civilians by both Hamas and the IDF, but stopped short of calling Hamas a terrorist organization. Some did not condemn the killing of Israeli soldiers that day.

Now, the Netanyahu government is beginning to frame voters’ choices as existential. “You’re either going to be with the most experienced prime minister in the history of Israel, or you’re going to gamble and put Israel at risk by electing Mr. Bennett and Mr. Lapid,” Rudnitzky said.

Rudnitsky added that Israeli politicians’ use of AI makes their messages more intuitive. “It feels real, it goes straight to the back of your head and it touches your nerves.”

After announcing his confrontation with Netanyahu, Bennett has sought to distance himself from this narrative, saying, “Arab parties are not Zionist, so we will not rely on them.”

But the videos are doing a lot of damage. Bennett filed a police report earlier this year after the Likud Bennett called the image a “malicious forgery.”

Other politicians have deployed similar messaging tactics against Netanyahu. In February, Avigdor Liberman, a right-wing critic of the prime minister, posted an AI-generated image of Netanyahu holding hands with Abbas in front of a bouquet of heart-shaped flowers with the caption “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

thank you pic.twitter.com/Sel1CkURFn

— Avigdor Liberman (@AvigdorLiberman) February 14, 2026

In response, Prime Minister Netanyahu posted an actual photo of Lieberman meeting with Abbas with the caption: “Mr. Lieberman published a doctored AI photo of the prime minister holding hands with Mansour Abbas. So, Avigdor, this is the real, unedited photo of you and Mansour Abbas.”

Lieberman then shared 10 posts about Netanyahu’s meetings with various Arab leaders since the 1990s, including former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Rudnitsky said such attacks on professional wrestling, targeting Jewish politicians and voters, have become a regular occurrence since October 7. “This is not about delegitimizing Arab voters,” he said. “The target is Naftali Bennett, not Mansour Abbas.”

​controversial pragmatist

Arab parties have long represented Israel’s Arab minority in the Knesset, but have historically remained outside of coalition governments. For decades, this arrangement, in which Arab parties received external support or remained in opposition, was widely accepted by both sides. While Arab politicians often avoided joining coalition governments for ideological reasons, Jewish parties primarily considered participation in coalition governments politically unsustainable.

Things changed in 2021 when Abbas made history by joining the winning coalition led by Bennett and Lapid. This decision positioned him as a pragmatist willing to work with Jewish parties to secure the interests of the Arab people.

In the aftermath of October 7, President Abbas was the most vocal Arab-Israeli political leader in condemning Hamas. He also stated, “The state of Israel was born as a Jewish state and will continue to be a Jewish state,” which is unusual for him to acknowledge Israel’s identity from this perspective. Still, Israel’s Arab-majority political parties do not define themselves as Zionist.

Abbas’s Ra’am, considered the most moderate of Israel’s Arab parties, is an Islamist party born out of Israel’s Islamic Movement and the Shura Council, an organization with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Prime Minister Abbas has increasingly distanced his party from these groups, denying any ties to the Brotherhood.

Forming a coalition government in Israel requires winning at least 61 of 120 seats, and some polls suggest the leading opposition to Prime Minister Netanyahu will likely need support from Arab parties to reach that threshold. However, the reliance on Arab parties to form a coalition government has become more controversial since October 7.

According to a Democracy Index poll, 72% of Israel’s Jewish citizens oppose the inclusion of Arab parties in a coalition government. Opposition extends beyond the right, with 43% of centrist voters and 20% of left-wing voters also opposing such a coalition. Approval ratings have fallen significantly since before October 7, when about 36% of Jewish Israelis, including the Arab parties in the government, supported it, but now it is only 27%.

Hence the opening of Bibi and his video blitz. “Over the past few years, we have seen the political debate escalate. There are no sacred cows anymore,” Rudnitsky said. “If you want to mobilize the entire Jewish nation and you know you’re behind in the polls…this is how you take the devil out of the bottle.”