Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party has asked Israel’s election authorities to intervene over an alleged WhatsApp disinformation campaign on the eve of the October 27 vote.
According to The Times of Israel’s Monday evening report, the party says thousands of Russian-language messages urged recipients not to support Liberman, falsely suggesting his party would miss the electoral threshold.
Bennett’s party joins the appeal
Yisrael Beytenu says messages came from numbers carrying Indian and Swedish country codes, with some accounts impersonating Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party. It says B’Yachad joined its appeal to Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg.
The party requested an order stopping distribution and an investigation by the Shin Bet and law enforcement into the messages’ origin and possible foreign involvement.
These are allegations by the parties. The report does not establish who sent the messages or confirm foreign interference. Telephone country codes alone do not identify an operation’s location or sponsor.
Separately, Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party alleged earlier Monday that a coordinated attack had blocked campaign officials’ WhatsApp access. No connection between the incidents has been established in the reporting cited here.
Why messaging disruptions matter on election day
The concern extends beyond misleading political messages. In an October 25 commentary for the Israel Democracy Institute, researcher Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler warned that campaigns and election administrators depend heavily on WhatsApp for coordination.
Disabling an account or group can interrupt volunteer instructions, transport arrangements and communication with polling-station staff. Her warning also distinguishes deliberate disruption from automated moderation mistakes: a surge in legitimate campaign activity can resemble spam, while reporting mechanisms can be abused.
She urged Meta and election authorities to establish rapid human review and emergency communication procedures. A standard account appeal resolved after voting ends may be too late to repair the disruption.
What remains to be established
The immediate questions are whether election authorities issue an order, whether investigators identify the senders, and whether the alleged messages or account restrictions affect election-day operations. Claims of a coordinated foreign operation require evidence beyond the parties’ initial statements.
For the wider political context, read Votendi’s profile of Gadi Eisenkot and his challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu, or explore our election hubs.
