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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday shared an AI-generated campaign ad depicting rival Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot rejecting an embrace from a young man with a T-shirt proclaiming “Israeli unity,” in favor of Mansour Abbas of the Arab party Ra’am.
The clip then displays the message: “Eisenkot has no government without [Democrats party chair] Yair Golan and the Arab parties.”
The ad was met with anger, and some critics, such as journalists Guy Peleg and Barak Seri, said the young man was heavily implied to be a stand-in for Eisenkot’s son Gal, who was killed fighting in the Gaza war.
Though the man does not unequivocally resemble Gal Eisenkot, he appears approximately the same age, and the location chosen — a blissful field of flowers — was seen by detractors as implying a heavenly setting.
Eisenkot’s son was killed while serving in Gaza in December 2023. In addition, two of the ex-general’s nephews were killed during the war.
The Yashar chairman is widely seen as Netanyahu’s chief challenger in the October 27 election, with recent polls placing his Yashar party ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud as the largest in the Knesset if elections were held today.
Responding to criticism of the ad, Likud denied that the figure in the video was intended to resemble Eisenkot’s son.
“The attempt by extremist elements to draw such a shocking comparison is merely an effort to conceal the simple fact that Gadi has no government without Yair Golan and the Arab parties,” the party said.
Later, Netanyahu’s embattled aide Jonatan Urich posted a new version of the ad, in which the “Israeli unity” shirt was worn by a woman instead.
“To remove any doubt,” he wrote in the post.
Yashar shares supercut of Likud praise of Abbas
In an apparent response to the ad, Yashar published a supercut of Netanyahu’s own political faction allying with Mansour Abbas over the years, featuring several politicians who are now ministers in the government praising the Ra’am chairman.
The clip featured now-Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli saying he was “very impressed by the very moderate line represented by Mansour Abbas,” and that he’d “be very happy to see him as regional cooperation minister.”
It also included footage of now-Justice Minister Yariv Levin praising Abbas in the Knesset, and now-Culture Minister Miki Zohar telling a TV interviewer that he was “not opposed” to including Abbas in a coalition.
It also showed Abbas himself, heckling Netanyahu on the floor of the parliament, saying: “You invited me to [the Prime Minister’s Residence four times!”
According to the Ra’am chairman, Netanyahu sought to include him in a government, though the entreaty ultimately failed.
Instead, Abbas served in the Bennett-Lapid government, which briefly unseated Netanyahu, lasting about a year before the elections that returned the Likud chief to the premiership.
The Yashar ad ended with the phrase: “Netanyahu has no government without the non-Zionist parties.”
The current government includes two ultra-Orthodox parties, one of which (United Torah Judaism) is officially anti-Zionist, and both of which (UTJ and Shas) have worked to codify longstanding exemptions for Haredi yeshiva students from mandatory military service.
Pledges by opposition politicians to only include “Zionist” parties in the next government are generally understood to exclude both the current Arab-majority parties and the ultra-Orthodox parties.
In a similar response to the premier’s ad, Blue and White party chairman Benny Gantz shared a similar AI-generated clip, in which Netanyahu, rather than Eisenkot, was depicted running through the field, ignoring a soldier in uniform and instead embracing Yisrael Goldknopf, the UTJ chairman.
Goldknopf was depicted holding a protest sign, of the sort often seen in Haredi anti-draft demonstrations, reading: “We will die and not enlist.”
The ad ended with the phrase: “Bibi has no government without Goldknopf.”
Smotrich ad mocks gay, Reform left-wing MKs
Netanyahu’s video was the latest in a series of AI-generated campaign ads released by coalition parties as part of a broader campaign portraying any government headed by Eisenkot as necessarily a left-wing coalition dependent on Ra’am and Yair Golan’s Democrats.
Any such government would also presumably include the right-wing Avigdor Liberman and Naftali Bennett and their parties.
On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party released an AI-generated ad targeting members of the Democrats’ newly elected Knesset slate, writing “these are Eisenkot and Tropper’s partners,” referring to former Blue and White MK Chili Tropper, who has joined forces with Yoaz Hendel’s Reservists party to form a new slate.
“This isn’t a broad, Zionist government — it’s a left-wing government,” the ad continued.
The video depicted MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi, surrounded by Palestinian flags, pigs and bacon, with the caption “Gilad ‘Bar Mitzvahs for dogs’ Kariv” — a reference Kariv condemned as antisemitic and denigrating to Reform Judaism.
Meanwhile, MK Naama Lazimi was depicted flanked by portraits of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, while activist Naor Narkis, who ran in the primaries but was not elected to a realistic spot in the slate, was shown surrounded by Pride flags, in an apparent attempt to denigrate him for being openly gay.
Neither video was labeled as AI-generated, despite a law passed by the Knesset last week requiring election and campaign materials created with AI to be identified as such.
The post Critics accuse Netanyahu of mocking Eisenkot’s slain son in AI-generated ad appeared first on The Times of Israel.
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