Gadi Eisenkot deepfake video — Oct 2026

In a 19-second video posted to X in July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared an AI-generated clip featuring his political rival, Gadi Eisenkot. The video, which was viewed more than 1 million times, depicted Eisenkot running through a meadow and embracing Mansour Abbas, a prominent Arab politician who leads the Ra'am party. The incident occurred during a tight election race between Netanyahu and Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

What happened

The AI-generated clip was designed to play on anti-Arab sentiment, a core component of Netanyahu's campaign strategy. In the video, Eisenkot is shown running in slow motion toward a person resembling his son, who was killed in 2023 during the Israel-Hamas war, before sailing past him to embrace Abbas. The content was part of a broader trend of AI deployment in the 2026 legislative election campaign. According to the Ze Be AI research project at the Open University of Israel, the Likud party—led by Netanyahu—had released more than 1,800 posts containing AI-generated content by mid-October, representing approximately one-quarter of the party's analyzed social media materials. While Israel's Central Elections Committee issued a rule in July requiring AI-generated or manipulated content in election campaigns to be labeled, the clip stirred significant public outrage as political scientists increasingly characterize the contest as Israel's first AI-driven election.