The Central Election Committee announced Friday morning that the Likud party must take down a social media post containing a manipulated image of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid together with leaders of Arab parties.

Deputy President of the Supreme Court Justice Noam Solberg, who chairs the Election Committee, ruled in favor of a petition filed by Bennett. In his decision, he wrote: “Likud must immediately remove the subject of the petition from all of its social media accounts. Likud will bear the petitioners’ expenses in the amount of 8,500 shekels.”

Following the ruling, the Bennett 2026 party welcomed the decision and issued a sharp response: “We are defeating the poison machine. We will not allow Likud to spread false poison. We will continue to fight with all our strength against lies, fake AI, and poison. We will win and fix Israel.”

At the same time as the petition was submitted to the Election Committee, Bennett’s party also turned to law enforcement, filing a police complaint against Likud for what it described as “distributing an edited and false image.”