Although there are only two months left until the Sept. 17 election, the campaigns haven’t really started, except for one. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on that fateful day, when, for the first time in his life, he couldn’t form a government after the May 30 election, the Likud recently started an aggressive Russian-language campaign against the chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, Avigdor Liberman, and his party. Even before that, Netanyahu appointed a special adviser on Israelis from the former Soviet republics to attract Yisrael Beitenu voters and prevent Liberman from being the deciding factor once again. The campaign is happening mostly on social media platforms, Netanyahu’s Facebook page and the Likud’s Russian Facebook page.
The opening shot was heard June 30, when a 28-second video was posted on Netanyahu’s Facebook page, called “How Avigdor Liberman actually votes.”