Netanyahu's AI Weapon: Eisenkot's Dead Son Used Against Him

Netanyahu's AI Weapon: Eisenkot's Dead Son Used Against Him

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign has deployed AI-generated imagery targeting Gadi Eisenkot — his most serious electoral challenger — in a move that has drawn condemnation across Israel's political spectrum, according to the New York Times.

The advertisements used fabricated images that played on anti-Arab sentiment while incorporating photographs seen as disrespectful to Eisenkot's son, who was killed in combat in Gaza. The tactic marks a new threshold in Israeli political warfare: synthetic media weaponising grief, deployed against a bereaved father who built his public standing partly on that loss.

Eisenkot, a former military chief, has emerged as the figure most capable of fracturing Netanyahu's coalition. His son's death in the war that Netanyahu is simultaneously prosecuting and running on has given him a moral authority that conventional opposition attacks cannot reach — which may explain why the campaign chose a different instrument entirely.

AI-generated political disinformation is not new. But using it to distort the image of a dead soldier's father, in a country where military bereavement carries enormous cultural weight, crosses a line that even Netanyahu's allies have struggled to defend publicly.

Israeli election law does not yet contain specific provisions governing synthetic media in campaign materials. The incident has reignited calls inside the Knesset for emergency legislation before the vote, per the New York Times, though no timeline has been set. What the Netanyahu campaign has demonstrated, whatever the legal outcome, is that in 2026 the barrier between memory and manipulation has effectively disappeared.

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*By Isla Camilleri, Global Affairs & Lifestyle Editor — News Beast by FreeMalta.com*