Russian AI Disinformation Campaign Targets Israeli Social Media Ahead of Elections

A pro-Russ­ian AI dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign has begun tar­get­ing Israeli social media ahead of the Novem­ber 2026 elec­tion using tac­tics near­ly iden­ti­cal to oper­a­tions that dis­rupt­ed Roma­ni­a’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Haaretz report­ed on Sep­tem­ber 14, 2025, that for­eign oper­a­tors cre­at­ed fake Face­book groups like “Moth­ers Cook Togeth­er” to attract Israeli fol­low­ers through reli­gious and con­ser­v­a­tive con­tent. The sophis­ti­cat­ed oper­a­tion aims to build infra­struc­ture for elec­tion inter­fer­ence by col­lect­ing user data and fun­nel­ing fol­low­ers into What­sApp groups where phone num­bers can be har­vest­ed for future targeting.The arti­cle begins:

“Wel­come to Moth­ers Cook Togeth­er! The tasti­est, warmest Face­book group there is 💛,” read the descrip­tion of the seem­ing­ly inno­cent Face­book group. “Here moth­ers (and also grand­moth­ers, sis­ters, aunts…) share recipes, kitchen tips, pho­tos of their suc­cess­es (or their fail­ures 😅)…” As of Sat­ur­day, the group had 13,000 mem­bers — not bad, con­sid­er­ing it was cre­at­ed just a few months ago. It is like­ly that its mem­bers — most of them real Israeli women — were like­ly look­ing for a dif­fer­ent, pop­u­lar group by the exact same name that was found­ed in 2014 and has more than 850,000 mem­bers. But by Sun­day morn­ing, after Haaretz reached out to Meta, Face­book had removed the group.

Read more: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/%202025–09-14/ty-article-magazine/.premium/first-romania-now-israel-pro-russian-ai-disinfo-campaign-preps-for-israeli-election/00000199–47ff-dc6e-a59f-cfff2cf10000

Key Points

• The cam­paign mir­rors the Roman­ian oper­a­tion that pro­mot­ed pro-Russ­ian can­di­date Călin Georges­cu, whose elec­tion vic­to­ry was annulled after intel­li­gence found evi­dence of for­eign inter­fer­ence and cyberattacks.
• Fake pro­files cre­at­ed pages like “Psalms — A Dai­ly Chap­ter” and “The Lord is King” using AI-gen­er­at­ed images of IDF sol­diers, mil­i­tary funer­als, and war casu­al­ties to exploit the Gaza con­flict for engagement.
• Pages con­tained traces of ear­li­er activ­i­ty in oth­er coun­tries includ­ing posts in Bul­gar­i­an and Pol­ish, with some pro­files reg­is­tered using for­eign phone num­bers from coun­tries like the Philippines.
• Roman­ian intel­li­gence attrib­uted their sim­i­lar cam­paign direct­ly to Rus­sia, though researchers found traces sug­gest­ing pos­si­ble Chi­nese involve­ment or attempts to frame the oper­a­tions as China-linked.

Russian Influence Operations in Israel: Disinformation and Strategy

Rus­sia has active­ly engaged in influ­ence oper­a­tions aimed at shap­ing pub­lic dis­course in Israel, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing moments of con­flict and polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty. Ana­lysts have doc­u­ment­ed Russ­ian attempts to inter­fere in Israeli media and social net­works, with nar­ra­tives designed to erode trust in the mil­i­tary, weak­en ties with the Unit­ed States, and ampli­fy domes­tic divi­sions. Oper­a­tions linked to the “Dop­pel­ganger” net­work have tar­get­ed both Jew­ish and Arab pop­u­la­tions with fab­ri­cat­ed con­tent and coor­di­nat­ed social media manipulation.

Dur­ing the Israel–Gaza con­flict, Russ­ian state media reframed events to depict Israel as a symp­tom of West­ern fail­ure, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deflect­ing atten­tion from Moscow’s own actions in Ukraine. Some observers also warn of Rus­sia exper­i­ment­ing with polit­i­cal lever­age inside Israel, even float­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cul­ti­vat­ing a pro-Russ­ian fac­tion as part of its broad­er region­al strat­e­gy. Togeth­er, these cas­es show how Israel is drawn into Russia’s dis­in­for­ma­tion playbook—both as a domes­tic are­na to desta­bi­lize and as a sym­bol­ic bat­tle­field in Russia’s wider con­fronta­tion with the West.

Exter­nal References:

• Russ­ian Influ­ence in Israel: Strate­gic Chal­lenges –
  
• Russia’s Dop­pel­ganger Cam­paign Tar­gets Israel
• How Rus­sia Uses the Israel–Gaza Cri­sis in Its Dis­in­for­ma­tion Cam­paign Against the West
• Russ­ian Inter­fer­ence in Israel’s Inter­nal Affairs –

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.