Hundreds of fake accounts on the X social media platform that claimed to be run by Iranians campaigned for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last month’s elections held in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a new report.
The report published by Haaretz on Friday said that an apparently organized network of 1,653 X accounts posing as Iranian users sought to convince Israeli voters to vote for Netanyahu in the October 28 parliamentary elections.
The accounts posted messages in Hebrew and English and introduced themselves as Iranians living in Iran or abroad, the report said.
It added that the accounts appeared to coordinate their activity by publishing identical messages and responding to posts in a coordinated manner.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee declined to issue a ruling on the case because the operators of the accounts remain unidentified, the report said, adding that Netanyahu’s office and his Likud party had denied any connection to the accounts.
The accounts published 109 identical posts or responded simultaneously, or within five minutes of each other, to 232 posts by 53 different accounts on the day of the Israeli election.
“We call on you to support Benjamin Netanyahu to finish the job,” one of the posts said, in a clear reference to Israel’s joint war of aggression with the United States against Iran, which ended with a ceasefire earlier this year.
“…if you want to be protected from the Islamic Republic and the Axis of Resistance, vote,” read a post on another account.
Before the elections, the accounts were part of an influence operation promoting Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former shah, who was toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Haaretz said.
It added that the X accounts promoting Netanyahu swiftly returned to their usual focus on Pahlavi after the Israeli elections.
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