Days ahead of close-fought Israeli elections, campaigns have gone into overdrive with poor-taste jibes and inflammatory attacks against candidates, sometimes crossing red lines.
Fuelled in part by a boom in AI-generated images flooding social media, candidates and activists are seeking to portray their opponents as weak, untrustworthy or damaging for the country as they play on stereotypes and fears to sway public opinion.
The electioneering has at times turned personal, with some candidates who lost loved ones in the wars following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack even having their bereavement dragged into the campaign.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, polls show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc neck and neck with that of his main centre-right rival Gadi Eisenkot.