Netanyahu has ramped up attacks on the Israeli opposition following the announcement of a coalition to unseat him [Getty]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted an AI-generated video to social media on Wednesday of political rivals Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett transforming into Palestinian Knesset members, in an attack on the coalition formed to unseat him.
The video shows former prime ministers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid sharing an embrace, after which they appear to peel off masks to reveal their ‘true’ identities.
After taking off the ‘masks’ the two opposition figures reveal themselves to be Palestinian Knesset members Ahmed Tibi and Mansour Abbas.
“Taking off the masks,” Netanyahu wrote in a Hebrew-language caption accompanying the post.
The post came shortly after Lapid and Bennett announced the formation of a coalition to unseat Netanyahu, who has dominated Israeli politics for nearly two decades.
The post by Netanyahu was slammed as “racist” by social media users, who highlighted the prime minister’s previous use of Israel’s Palestinian citizens as part of scare tactics during elections.
Some social media users also noted that the top Hebrew-language Community Note on the X post also appeared to play into the original post’s “racist” message, accusing Netanyahu of being the first to bring Palestinians with Israeli citizenship into government.
“Netanyahu was the first to propose to Mansour Abbas to participate in his government, and he brought down the Bennett-Lapid government with the help of the vote from Tibi’s party,” reads the note.
In response, one X user wrote: “netanyahu: lapid and bennett are arabs the community note: it is, in fact, netanyahu who is the arab”.
Israel’s elections are set to take place in October, with many seeing the vote as a referendum on the country’s long-serving prime minister.
A poll by Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday found that the Bennett-Lapid slate would win 26 seats, putting them ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.
Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc would only secure 50 out of 120 Knesset seats, according to the poll. A further 60 seats would go to Zionist opposition parties, and ten to Palestinian-Israeli parties.
