As election season in Israel heats up, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his government are deploying a charged weapon against their political opponents aiming to overthrow them: AI-generated viral videos.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu and key allies have taken to social media to post satirical content on their social media accounts, depicting their leading opponents, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, as being controlled by Arab-Israeli puppetmasters.

One viral video posted by the prime minister last week, with over a million views, is captioned “taking off the masks.” It shows a smiling Bennett and Lapid embracing before peeling off their faces to reveal those of prominent Arab-Israeli political leaders Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi.

מורידים את המסכות pic.twitter.com/IgFDWXp96N

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 29, 2026

After Bennett and Lapid announced in April that they would run jointly against Netanyahu in the upcoming fall elections, Israeli political Twitter flooded with AI-generated content on this theme, which goes for the jugular on a political vulnerability for Bennett: his past inclusion of Abbas’ Arab Ra’am party in his governing coalition.

One image posted by Likud, Netanyahu’s party, featured Bennett and Lapid depicted as children sitting obediently in the back seat of a car as Abbas drives. The photo is accompanied by the caption: “In any case, Bennett and Lapid will go again with the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorism supporters.”

גם ביחד זה ברור – הנהג הוא מנסור.

לא משנה איך השמאל מחלק את הקולות שלו.

בכל מקרה בנט ולפיד ילכו שוב עם ברית האחים המוסלמים תומכי הטרור. pic.twitter.com/iYFIZQ8QhJ

— הליכוד (@Likud_Party) April 26, 2026

These AI videos reflect a growing post–Oct. 7 trend in Israeli politics: accusing one’s political opponents of being aligned with Arab parties as a way to delegitimize them.

Dr. Arik Rudnitzky, a researcher in the Arab Society in Israel program at the Israel Democracy Institute, said the trauma Israelis experienced after Oct. 7 has left a profound mark on the Jewish public. That fear, he said, is now being actively mobilized in political messaging.

“The post–Oct. 7 discourse is so influential in Israeli politics that it dictates everything,” Rudnitzky said. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Betzalel Smootrich went as far as to say that Naftali Bennett’s decision to include the Islamist Ra’am party in the 2021-2022 government was worse than the Netanyahu government’s failures tied to Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7. This, despite the fact that Mansour Abbas has said that Netanyahu tried to court him into joining his coalition in 2021, though Netanyahu has denied this.

According to Rudnitzky, the implicit message is that Israel’s Arab parties are dangerous. The argument is that they are not Zionist (and some Arab parties are even explicitly anti-Zionist). In the aftermath of Oct. 7, while some Arab-Israeli political leaders condemned violence from both Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces on civilians, they stopped short of referring to Hamas as a terror organization. Some also failed to condemn the murder of Israeli soldiers on that day.

Now, Netanyahu’s government has taken to framing the choice for voters as existential. “Either you are with the most experienced prime minister in Israel’s history, or you are willing to gamble and put Israel at risk by electing Bennett and Lapid,” said Rudnitzky.

The use of AI by Israeli politicians, Rudnitzky added, makes that message more visceral. “It looks real, it goes straight to the back of your mind, and it hits a nerve.”

Bennett, for his part, has tried to distance himself from this narrative, stating after he announced that he would be running against Netanyahu, “The Arab parties are not Zionist, and therefore we will not rely on them.”

But the videos are taking their toll. Earlier this year, Bennett filed a police report after the Likud X account posted a doctored image that depicted Bennett celebrating with Arab leaders, with the men all raising their clasped hands in celebration. Bennett called the image “malicious forgery.”

Other politicians have deployed similar messaging tactics — against Netanyahu. In February, Avigdor Liberman, a right-wing critic of the prime minister, posted an AI-generated image of Netanyahu holding hands with Abbas in front of a bouquet of heart-shaped flowers, captioned: “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

יום אהבה שמח❤ pic.twitter.com/Sel1CkURFn

— אביגדור ליברמן (@AvigdorLiberman) February 14, 2026

In response, Netanyahu posted an actual photo of Lieberman meeting with Abbas with the caption: “Lieberman published a doctored AI photo of the PM holding hands with Mansour Abbas. So, Avigdor, here’s a real, unedited photo of you and Mansour Abbas.”

Lieberman then shared 10 posts of Netanyahu meeting with various Arab leaders since the 1990s, including former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to Rudnitzky, such wrestling-ring attacks have become normalized since Oct. 7, aimed at Jewish politicians and voters. “This is not about delegitimizing Arab voters,” he said. “The target is Naftali Bennett — not Mansour Abbas.”

​A controversial pragmatist

Arab parties have long represented Israel’s Arab minority in the Knesset but historically remained outside governing coalitions. For decades, this arrangement — Arab parties supporting from the outside or remaining in opposition — was broadly acceptable to both sides. Arab politicians often avoided joining coalitions for ideological reasons, while Jewish parties largely viewed their inclusion as politically untenable.

That changed in 2021, when Abbas made history by joining the winning coalition led by Bennett and Lapid. That decision positioned him as a pragmatist, willing to work with Jewish parties to secure gains for Arab citizens.

In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Abbas issued the most explicit condemnations of Hamas among Arab Israeli political leaders. He has also said that “the state of Israel was born as a Jewish state, and it will remain one,” a rare acknowledgment of Israel’s identity in those terms. Still, no Arab-majority party in Israel defines itself as Zionist.

While it is considered to be the most moderate of the Arab parties in Israel, Abbas’ Ra’am is an Islamist party that emerged from the Islamic Movement in Israel and the Shura Council — organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Abbas has increasingly sought to distance the party from those groups and has denied any affiliation with the Brotherhood.

Forming a governing coalition in Israel requires at least 61 seats out of 120, and several polls have suggested that any viable opposition to Netanyahu would likely need Arab party support to reach that threshold. But reliance on Arab parties to form a coalition has become more contentious since Oct. 7.

According to the Democracy Index poll, 72% percent of the Jewish public in Israel opposes the inclusion of Arab parties in the governing coalition. Opposition extends beyond the right: 43% of centrist voters and 20% of left-wing voters also oppose such coalitions. Support has declined significantly since before Oct. 7, when roughly 36% of Jewish Israelis backed including Arab parties in government, compared to just 27% today.

Hence the opening for Bibi and his video blitz. “We’ve seen an escalating political discourse over the past several years. There are no more holy cows,” said Rudnitzky. “If you want to mobilize the entire Jewish public and you know that you are in an inferior position in the polls … this is the way to take the demons out of the bottle.”

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(JTA) — Police have arrested a man in connection with two Toronto-area synagogue shootings that occurred on the same night in March.

Nobody was injured in either attack, though two maintenance workers were inside Beth Avraham Yoseph when it was struck with bullets on March 6 after Shabbat services.

Toronto police did not share the name of the suspect, who is an 18-year-old man, because he was 17 at the time of the incidents. His photo was shared by police last week.

The suspect, who police said is “of no fixed address,” faces a number of charges, including mischief to property over $5,000, discharging a firearm into a place, unauthorized possession of a firearm, and possessing a “prohibited device.” He was not charged with a hate crime, though the investigation is still ongoing.

Toronto’s Jewish community has been roiled by a recent string of overnight gunfire attacks on synagogues and Jewish-owned restaurants, for which police had identified no suspects for months. A rock was also thrown through the glass window of a Judaica shop in April in broad daylight.

Similar attacks have targeted Jewish communities in places such as the United Kingdom and Australia. Police in London said recent arson attacks may have been carried out in exchange for payments from Iran, which has a long track record of sowing violence against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad. Australian authorities also suggested that assailants might have been paid amid arsons and an antisemitic terror plot there last year.

Wednesday marked the second arrest made by police related to Toronto’s string of attacks, after a suspect was charged on April 8 for shooting at the Jewish-owned Old Avenue Restaurant a week prior. No suspects have been publicly identified for a separate Old Avenue shooting, as well as another synagogue shooting, both in March.

“These attacks shook the sense of safety not only for those congregations, but for Jewish communities across the region,” the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto wrote following the arrest. “We thank the Toronto Police Service and York Regional Police for their diligence and coordination in advancing this investigation. Their work sends a clear signal that those who target our community will be identified and held accountable.”

B’nai Brith Canada thanked police in a statement, but said that “there is still more work to do.”

“It’s a stark reminder of why a whole‑of‑government response is long overdue. Confronting antisemitism requires our leaders to act with moral clarity,” the organization wrote.

The post Man charged for two Toronto-area synagogue shootings appeared first on The Forward.

NEW YORK — Even inside a five-story brownstone crowded with paintings, sculptures and books, no single work can fully contain the spirit of Ukrainian-born artist Ben-Zion. Still, one painting comes close: a portrait of the healer and rabbi known as Baal Shem Tov, seated calmly beneath a tree. Rendered in ochre, gray and green, the canvas draws on Jewish mysticism and the natural world, themes that pulse through Ben-Zion’s life and work.

Perfectly preserved from the years Ben-Zion lived there, from 1965 until his death in 1987, the Ben-Zion House, located in Chelsea in Manhattan, is anything but a mausoleum. Instead, it feels like a living sanctuary — one that not only celebrates the Jewish artist’s life and work, but continues to inspire the writers, poets, architects, musicians and painters who pass through its rooms.

“Through the years many artists have been in the space and have expressed their awe and inspiration,” said Tabita Shalem, the house’s curator and manager while leading a tour on a drizzly Thursday in April. “The way Ben-Zion lived was intimately connected to the work he created, and artists and creatives feel that when they are in the home and studio.”.

Shalem worked closely with Ben-Zion during the last decade of his life, helping to organize exhibitions and maintain the vast collection. She continued those efforts with his widow, Lillian Ben-Zion, until her death in 2012. Through Shalem’s stories, the house emerges not simply as an archive, but as an extension of the artist himself.

As one of “The Ten,” a cohort of artists who rejected realism in favor of experimental, expressionist work, Ben-Zion stood alongside Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and others who helped shape American Expressionism. Yet while many of his contemporaries became internationally renowned, Ben-Zion’s name lingers at the edge of obscurity — even as his work hangs in institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1948, the Jewish Museum opened in Manhattan with an exhibition devoted to Ben-Zion’s work and later mounted two more shows, including a 1959 retrospective. But as Abstract Expressionism rose to dominance, interest in his work faded.

“He wasn’t interested in abstract art,” Shalem said. “He wasn’t a joiner.”

Still, his wife and friends held firmly to their belief in the value of Ben-Zion’s work, a conviction reflected in the preservation of the house itself. Funded by a private estate, the home allows artists and visitors to continue engaging with the work of this important, though largely forgotten, Jewish artist. His legacy is also kept alive through guided tours, often organized in partnership with community groups.

Born in 1897 in Staryi Kostiantyniv, Ben-Zion grew up in an observant Jewish home. His father, Hirsh Weinman, was a cantor who, in 1909, accepted a position at the largest synagogue in Galicia. For a time, Ben-Zion considered becoming a rabbi himself.

That changed at 16, when he read about the excommunication of Baruch Spinoza for challenging rabbinic authority and questioning Jewish doctrine.

“His brain was on fire,” Shalem said. “He never went to shul again.”

Yet Ben-Zion never abandoned Judaism. After his father’s sudden death in 1920, his mother moved the family to Boston. Among the belongings he carried with him was a handwritten Purim megillah he had calligraphed at age 14.

“His Jewish identity was always a part of him. The way I think of Ben-Zion is that he was deeply rooted in Judaism, but like the branches of the trees he painted, he was free and always reaching,” Shalem said.

Feeling out of place in Boston society, Ben-Zion moved less than a year later to the Bronx, where he immersed himself in poetry, prose, painting and sculpture. The move marked the beginning of a fiercely independent artistic life, one equally nourished by Jewish tradition, philosophy and the natural world.

That reverence for nature reveals itself throughout the brownstone, from monumental canvases of golden wheat beneath cerulean skies to delicate pen-and-ink drawings of thistles and poppies. Walking through the house, lit almost entirely by natural light, it becomes clear that Ben-Zion was as much a collector as a creator.

A bowl of prehistoric tools sits atop one table. Nearby, miniature statues of prophets and Buddhas line a curio cabinet. Conglomerates gathered from rivers and streams are interspersed on shelves. And in another corner, his paint-scarred palette rises from a wooden table like a small mountain streaked with copper and turquoise. Behind a leafy plant, a Ten Commandments tablet features smooth pebbles instead of words.

One of the tour’s highlights comes on the garden level, where visitors descend through a trapdoor and down a steep staircase into the cellar. During Ben-Zion’s lifetime, the stone-lined basement served primarily as storage for art materials. After his death, Lillian and Shalem transformed it into a gallery-like space filled with sculptures, tools and unfinished ideas.

Rows of scissors and metal implements hang against whitewashed walls. Four masks carved from tree bark rest on a wooden table nearby.

“He saw art in everything,” said Amy Levine-Kennedy, director of the Westchester Jewish Center Koslowe Gallery, which organized the private tour.

Against one wall stands an iron sculpture of a circus, while nearby the 1972 work “Apocalypse (or Devastation)” rises from the floor, reflecting Ben-Zion’s recurring fascination with destruction, memory and survival.

According to Shalem, a friend of Lillian’s who had been stationed in the South Pacific during World War II shipped crates of discarded munitions to Ben-Zion after learning of the artist’s love for forged iron. Ben-Zion transformed the remnants of war into sculpture.

Though Ben-Zion studied briefly at an art school in Vienna during World War I, he was otherwise self-taught. A voracious reader, he consumed history, poetry, philosophy, Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and art history. Today the brownstone contains hundreds of books on art, history, spirituality, archaeology, and literature. “France in the Middle Ages” and “History of the Jewish Khazans” compete for shelf space with “Van Gogh in Arles” and “Jews and Arabs.”

Beyond making art and mentoring younger artists, Ben-Zion also taught through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. At Cooper Union, where he taught from the 1930s up until the 1960s, he encouraged students to treat art not as decoration, but as a way of giving form to inner vision.

That vision lingers in the final work he created in the house. Resting on an easel on the second floor, the painting depicts a Jewish man wrapped in tefillin, his head tilted downward toward the prayer book in his hands. In broad strokes of orange, white, black, and blue, Ben-Zion distilled the themes that shaped his life: Jewish identity, learning, ritual and spiritual searching.

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