Netanyahu shares AI image of a nuclear blast over Tel Aviv as Israel prepares to vote

On Sunday 25 October, an AI-generated image of a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv appeared on Benjamin Netanyahu’s X account, accompanied by a warning of a “second Holocaust” and a message that Israelis concerned about their physical survival and that of their families should vote accordingly. Haaretz reported that the image, shared 48 hours before the election, prompted Netanyahu’s rivals to accuse him of being “hysterical.” The copy was not originally his: the shared post came from right-wing activist Yuval Bloomberg and argued that Israel faces a tangible existential threat from Iran and needs a prime minister capable of maintaining close personal relations with Donald Trump and resisting international pressure. The Times of Israel, whose liveblog headline carried Gadi Eisenkot’s two-word verdict — “He’s hysterical” — noted that Netanyahu told the United Nations last month that Israel had devastated Iran’s atomic weapons programme.

The post lands on a campaign that is, by the last legally publishable numbers, effectively tied. Haaretz reported that the final polls released Friday evening by Israel’s three main television channels gave Eisenkot’s bloc 52 to 56 of the Knesset’s 120 seats against a projected 50 for Netanyahu’s governing bloc, with Arab-majority parties on 14 to 16 and neither side reaching the 61 needed to govern. Ynet’s Ofir Yonatan reported the same spread and noted that Eisenkot’s Yashar leads Likud while Ofer Winter falls below the 3.25 percent threshold in all three surveys. The Times of Israel described the result as continued gridlock, with most small parties projected out of the Knesset and Yashar forecast to be the largest faction. An N12 poll on 21 October put Yashar first on 23 seats, Channel 13 on 20; Likud came second on 19 in both.

Assessment: The image is not a message about Iran. It is a message about the undecided voter in a race where, on the published averages, a single threshold-marginal party decides who forms a government. Note what the provenance tells you: Netanyahu amplified someone else’s copy, which gives him deniability over the apocalypse while keeping the reach. The argument in that borrowed text — that only he can manage Trump — is the actual pitch; the mushroom cloud is the delivery vehicle. Distrust the claim, circulating in international coverage, that the post caused “concern in Washington”: no named US official has said so. And read the September UN line alongside it. A leader cannot have both destroyed the threat and be the only man standing between voters and annihilation.