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The Central Elections Committee chairman ordered removal of an AI-generated video and held that a caption in the body of a Facebook post did not cure it
The interesting holding is not that a fabricated handshake misleads. It is that the disclaimer failed because of where Facebook chooses to put it.
Bottom line: Binding on the parties before the committee. This is a decision on two petitions for an injunction under section 17B of the Elections (Means of Propaganda) Law, and it grants removal plus costs, not guidance.
Who this affects: Israeli election counsel, party digital teams and the agencies that produce their video, plus anyone advising on whether an AI disclaimer placed in post copy will hold up.
Issue date: 26 July 2026, being 12 Av 5786, the date the decision was given. The video at issue was published on 23 June 2026 and the petitions were filed on 25 and 26 June 2026.
What changed: The chairman set out, on the facts, why a clarification in the body of a post fails: on most Facebook displays a viewer must click through an expansion to see it, and an ordinary viewer will not go looking.
Analysis: The new statutory marking duty in section 2A2 did not decide this case. The chairman held it does not apply to propaganda first published before its commencement and preferred not to construe it here, so the outcome ran entirely on section 13, the long-standing prohibition on unfair interference with another party's propaganda.
Primary sources: CEC announcement on the decision (gov.il, Hebrew) · Decision in TBK 73/26 and 74/26 (PDF, Hebrew)
- Instrument (EN)
- Decision on petitions TBK 73/26 (Bocharim BeYisrael) and TBK 74/26 (Yashar LeYisrael im Eisenkot)
- Authority
- Justice Noam Sohlberg, Deputy President of the Supreme Court, chairman of the Central Elections Committee for the 26th Knesset
- Jurisdiction
- Israel
- Status
- Decided. Petitions accepted
- Bindingness
- Binding on the respondents. Removal ordered from all their social media accounts, with costs of 5,000 shekels to each petitioner
- Legal basis
- Section 13 of the Elections (Means of Propaganda) Law, 5719-1959, on petitions for an injunction brought under section 17B
- Issue date / next deadline
- 26 July 2026. The decision states no compliance window on its face
- Primary source
- https://www.gov.il/he/pages/dover_7
The clip
On 23 June 2026 Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who chairs the Religious Zionism party, published a twenty-second video on his personal political Facebook account. The audio is an excerpt of a real interview with former prime minister Naftali Bennett, in which he speaks about evacuating outposts and about Area C forming part of Israel while Areas A and B form part of the Palestinian Autonomy.
Two visual passages run behind that audio, and the decision records that both were generated with AI. In the first, a soldier lowers the Israeli flag from a mast and a figure then raises the Palestinian flag. In the second, which the petitions were really about, Gadi Eisenkot appears shaking hands with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, with MK Mansour Abbas joining them and making a V sign.
The clip then cuts to a black background with cracked-glass lines and the words that they mean what they say, followed by a caption about a minister for regional cooperation in an Eisenkot government establishing a Palestinian state.
Two petitions and a moving disclaimer
The NGO Bocharim BeYisrael petitioned on 25 June 2026 and sought an interim order. Smotrich had by then added a caption beside the video saying that some of the pictures and segments in the video were created using AI. The chairman declined the interim order.
The caption was subsequently changed to a clarification stating that the speech is in Bennett's real voice and that the video is edited with AI. The NGO replied that the video had been circulated on further accounts without any clarification, that the clarification is not embedded in the video, that it is not always visible in the attachment, and that its wording is imprecise.
Yashar LeYisrael im Eisenkot petitioned on 26 June 2026 on substantially the same ground. The respondents filed a joint answer on 5 July 2026 arguing that the video is not a forgery because Bennett's recording is genuine, that the visual passages merely illustrate his words, and that the after-the-fact clarification removes any concern of misleading.
Why section 13 was breached
The chairman accepted that Bennett's voice is real and taken from a real interview. That was not what the petitions attacked. The attack was on the fabricated meeting, and it is undisputed that no such meeting occurred while the depiction is highly realistic.
He rejected the argument that the surrounding caption made the fiction obvious. The caption comes later than the passage, the handshake runs in parallel with genuine interview audio, and the caption describes a future act by a minister in a government not yet formed while the image shows Eisenkot himself shaking hands. The answer never explained why MK Mansour Abbas belongs in a scene about establishing a Palestinian state, despite the shared surname.
That left a real prospect that a viewer would read the simulated meeting as an independent factual claim. On the formal aspect, Yashar's petition argued that the video creates the impression of a political affinity, agreement or partnership between Yashar and Abu Mazen and MK Abbas with no factual basis, and risks blurring the political distinction between Yashar and Ra'am. The chairman accepted that framing and held that, because the misleading is delivered by visual means in a video that appears to be real, near certainty of real misleading of the voter arises on the formal aspect.
The disclaimer point, which is the transferable one
In an earlier decision the chairman had suggested that the risk of misleading from AI content can be removed by a clarification stating clearly and openly that the content was created by software and does not represent reality, placed on the picture itself or in the body of the film to which it is attached.
Here the clarification sat in the body of the film, so the question was whether it was in fact clear and open. He worked through the display: on Facebook reels viewed on a wide computer screen it may be possible in some cases to see the clarification over the video, but usually a further click is needed to expand text that appears only partially by default. In an ordinary post display the clarification may only surface if the reader presses more. On a mobile phone it will not be seen without pressing more on the video.
An ordinary viewer who looks at the video and is not hunting for annotations in the post body will not see it. The clarification therefore did not achieve its purpose, the risk of misleading was not removed, and the breach of section 13 stood.
Disposition
The petitions were accepted. Respondents 1 and 2, the party and Minister Smotrich, were ordered to remove the video from all their social media accounts.
They were also ordered to bear the petitioners' costs at 5,000 shekels to each, 10,000 shekels in total.
The chairman noted separately that the new marking provision, section 2A2, does not apply to election propaganda first published before its commencement, and said it was better to construe that innovative section in a case where it actually applies.
What we did not verify
I opened the committee's Hebrew announcement and the full five-page decision PDF, including the procedural history, the section 13 analysis, the reasoning on the Facebook display, the removal order and the costs award, and the date given as 12 Av 5786, 26 July 2026.
I did not open the video, the earlier decisions cited in it, the petitions or the respondents' answer, and I did not read section 13 or section 17 in the statute book. The PDF is Hebrew only and the text was extracted from a right-to-left layout, so every phrase here is my own working translation and the case citations in the decision are not reproduced.
I am not asserting that the video was removed, that the costs were paid, that any appeal or further proceeding followed, or that this reasoning binds anyone who was not a party.
Placement is now a litigated question, not a design preference. A disclosure that the platform hides behind an expansion control is, on this reasoning, a disclosure the ordinary viewer never receives, and the publisher wears the consequence. Anyone shipping synthetic footage should assume the mark has to survive a mobile feed with no clicks, which in practice means burning it into the asset.
Source File
https://www.gov.il/he/pages/dover_7
Open gov.il/he/pages/dover_7, download the attached decision PDF, and confirm the case numbers TBK 73/26 and 74/26, the finding that the depicted meeting did not occur but appears realistic, the paragraph explaining that the Facebook clarification requires a further click on mobile, and the order that respondents 1 and 2 remove the video and pay 5,000 shekels to each petitioner.
An ordinary viewer, who looks at the video and is not searching for additions and interpretations in the body of the film, will not see the clarification. The conclusion is that the clarification added in this case is not visible to most viewers. ยท Chairman of the Central Elections Committee, TBK 73/26 and 74/26, TLY working translation from the Hebrew, 26 July 2026
FAQ
Was the whole video found to be fake?
No. The chairman accepted that the audio is a genuine recording of Naftali Bennett from a real interview. The finding concerned an AI-generated visual passage showing a meeting that did not take place.
Did the new AI marking law decide the case?
No. The chairman held that section 2A2 does not apply to election propaganda first published before its commencement, and said it was better to construe that new section in a case where it applies. The decision rests on section 13 of the Means of Propaganda Law.
Why was the AI caption not enough?
Because of where it sat. The clarification was in the body of the Facebook post, and on the chairman's account most display modes, mobile in particular, require the viewer to press more before the text appears, so an ordinary viewer would not see it.
What was ordered?
Removal of the video from all social media accounts of the party and of Minister Smotrich, plus costs of 5,000 shekels to each of the two petitioners, 10,000 shekels in total.
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