Shin Bet Removes Accounts Used for Foreign Election Interference

The Shin Bet said on Thursday that it had removed numerous accounts from social media sites for attempting to manipulate and interfere with Israel's upcoming election, The Jerusalem Post reports. According to the agency, the accounts were engaged in activities that could allow foreign influence on the election process. The Shin Bet said it would keep working to protect the integrity of the vote and the democratic process.

It was a joint operation. According to TPS, the Shin Bet worked with the State Attorney's Cyber Department and the Central Elections Committee. The three bodies tracked covert digital profiles that were systematically trying to manipulate domestic public discourse ahead of the vote, then had them taken down. Security authorities said the multi-agency monitoring will continue.

The announcement left much unsaid. Haredim 10 notes that the Shin Bet did not say who was behind the accounts, which countries ran the activity, which platforms the profiles used or what messages they spread. It did not give the number of accounts removed either. The Jerusalem Post points out that in prior elections, the Shin Bet and other officials named Russia, Iran and China as the top interfering parties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a Wednesday interview with The Jerusalem Post, said Iran and its regional proxies have been considering ways to influence the election. The paper reports he seemed to mean not only cyber influence campaigns but also physical attacks and terrorism.

The takedown also came not long after an October 8 warning by Israel National Cyber Directorate Chief Yossi Karadi, The Jerusalem Post reports. Karadi told world leaders and heads of cyber defense organizations that nations risk losing control over AI agents and models, and he urged them to set clear limits now. "Leaders do not need to become AI engineers. They need to decide where dependence is acceptable, where resilience is non-negotiable, and where human authority must remain decisive," he wrote.

What it means: Israelis go to the polls this Tuesday. Israel's enemies cannot cast a ballot, so they try to shape the conversation from outside. This time the Shin Bet found the hidden hands, shut them down before election day and told the public it is still watching. “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4)

Prime Minister Netanyahu framed the vote as a strategic contest in his interview with The Jerusalem Post. The paper reports he named Iranian leaders, Hamas, Hezbollah, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas among those he said wanted him defeated. TPS reports that Israeli cyber officials confirmed the covert accounts were removed across key platforms, and that the goal was to protect the country's electoral systems from clandestine outside manipulation.

Karadi's October 8 warning went further than a call for limits, The Jerusalem Post reports. His paper argues that as cyberattacks grow faster and more automated, defense systems will need to detect, decide and act at machine speed, past the point where a human can approve every action. The paper notes his warning followed recent incidents around the world in which AI agents breached government databases. Karadi proposes that nations set a clear hierarchy of what AI may do on its own, what needs human approval, and what must never be handed to a machine, and a summary statement said he called on leaders to "determine now which powers may be delegated to AI systems and which decisions must remain exclusively in human hands."