Israel remains vigilant against the threat of cyberattacks during the elections

On the eve of the general elections, Israel is on alert for the risk of cyber attacks and interference campaigns by enemy countries, especially Iran, seeking to disrupt the vote or polarize the country in the midst of the political crisis.

Las Tuesday’s election they are a “priority objective for influence campaigns” against the Hebrew State, warned the Minister of Communications, Yoaz Hendel, when the country prepares for the fifth legislative in three and a half years.

This ministry and the National Cybersecurity Authority are preparing to counter direct attacks against the servers of the Central Electoral Committee and against national infrastructures.

But there is another threat that generates concern and that is “the risk of foreign intervention” through influence campaigns, estimated Isaac Amit, president of the Central Electoral Committee.

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“There are technical aspects such as the attack on websites and content issues, such as false news or the delegitimization of the results,” he added, explaining that in this case the objective is “to harm democracy,” causing “schisms and suspicions.”

For Ofir Barel, who is a researcher at the University of Tel Avivthere is evidence of Iran’s attempts to “attempt to influence Israeli society by spreading lies with political content.”

“We have found on several occasions that there are fake Iranian accounts, followed by hundreds of people, spreading divisive and inciting messages to damage the image of some politicians.”

“The goal is not to directly harm a particular politician, but to encourage polarization and chaos in Israeli politics, which is already very complex due to the political impasse,” he added.

“Doubts”

The Israeli Internet Association addressed a letter to Facebook and to its parent company Meta Platform warning of the “lack of sufficient preparation of social networks before the elections in Israel”.

The letter highlighted the efforts carried out by Meta to ensure the integrity of elections in other countries such as India, Brazil and the United States.

But the Association said it has “research-based doubts” about Meta’s enforcement of community standards in Israel, citing the lack of monitoring of messages in Hebrew as a possible cause.

Meanwhile, civil society groups are also increasing their efforts to combat inflammatory messages online.

Before the vote, the Tel Aviv University Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) organized a simulation of possible threats.

The director of the INSS, Tamir Heyman, considers that the risk of a cybernetic “is not high” since Israelis vote with paper ballots, but noted that social networks they are susceptible to campaigns of foreign influence aimed at dividing society.

Such a campaign could be aimed at casting doubt on the “legitimacy or even the results” of the process that is anticipated to be very closed between the right-wing bloc of Benjamin Netanyahu and the parties that can support the outgoing prime minister, the centrist politician Yair LapidHeyman warned.

The time has come for Israel to have an official body, which has the responsibility and authority to defend Israeli democracy against attempts at influence from abroad,” he said.

However, these influence campaigns are sustained by the interest and active attention of netizens, and given the repeated elections in recent years in Israel and the electoral fatigue that this generated, this could hinder these efforts.

Voters “are more alert, they don’t believe everything that is published,” said Ofir Barel, a researcher at Tel Aviv University.

“After so many votes in such a short time, people are tired of elections and politics and they don’t care so much anymore,” he said.

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