Netanyahu’s Likud party and its opposition rivals are locked in a tight race ahead of Tuesday’s Israeli election, using bots, deepfakes, targeted advertising and voter-monitoring tools to undermine each other and mobilize supporters.

The online campaign has exposed divisions within Israeli politics, with competing factions portraying one another as threats to regime’s future while seeking to exploit public fears over security, Palestinian citizens’ political participation and the legacy of the October 7, 2023.

On Thursday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that dozens of bots originally created to undermine the Iranian government had been repurposed to promote Netanyahu and Likud, while warning voters about opposition figures Gadi Eisenkot and former prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Meanwhile, both camps have circulated AI-generated videos and deepfakes on X, including material attacking Netanyahu over October 7 and portraying opposition figures as sympathetic to Arab parties.

Mauricio Lapchik, director of the Arab-dominated Joint List’s Hebrew-language campaign, said the technological imbalance had further disadvantaged smaller parties.

“We’re competing against parties with far greater budgets and technological resources, particularly the Likud,” he said. “The use of technology is clearly deepening an already unequal playing field … We may not have the same resources, but we are convinced that our message matters more than the artificial technology behind it.”

Digital tools target voters and rivals

Israeli right-wing parties have directed substantial campaign resources against the left-wing Joint List, an alliance of Hadash, Balad and Ta’al, and Ra’am, also known as the United Arab List.

Likud has turned to a new application, Victory 2, after the Central Elections Committee restricted its use of Elector, a voter-turnout tracking application, over privacy concerns.

According to Haaretz, Victory 2 allows party activists to identify areas with low turnout, manually record the names of people who have voted and target those who have not.

Sebastian Ben Daniel, a doctoral researcher specializing in algorithms, computability and AI, said such applications were rudimentary compared with the surveillance capabilities developed by the Israeli military.

These concerns are particularly significant for Palestinian citizens of the occupied lands, who account for about 20 percent of the population and whose political activity is already subject to monitoring.

Deepfakes intensify political infighting

The campaign has also featured AI-generated material targeting political opponents and institutions.

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich sparked an uproar after releasing an AI video depicting the Supreme Court president, a justice and the attorney general being violently dragged away from an antigovernment protest.

In another video shared by Netanyahu, opposition leader Eisenkot appeared to run past an AI-generated figure resembling his son Gal, who was killed while taking part in the genocide in Gaza, before embracing Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas.

Netanyahu’s camp later denied intending to portray Eisenkot’s son and replaced the male character with a female figure.

Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has also faced criticism over an AI video depicting people from Gaza as donkeys being herded to Paris, amid his calls for the territory’s “voluntary emigration.”

Roi Zur, a University of Essex lecturer specializing in voting behavior and election strategies, said the online campaign had intensified hostility between rival political camps.

“The online campaign has been especially violent. AI, algorithms and data management are all utilized to cement what we call ‘affective polarization’,” he told Al Jazeera.

He said the strategy sought to draw wavering voters back into their political camps by amplifying hostility toward opponents.

With turnout and smaller parties potentially playing a decisive role, the rival factions are competing not only for votes but also to mobilize their own supporters while portraying the opposing camp as a threat.