Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly known for savvy social media skills and use of digital forums to reach out to his electorate, and he’s using these methods to attract and maintain a base of support among Israeli youth. 

The prime minister's Twitter account has more than 1.5 million followers, and his Facebook page has 2.4 million. By the way, he has more than one Facebook page, and the 2.4 million refers only to the most popular one. Netanyahu also corresponds with world leaders on his Facebook account; thus, he received congratulations on his electoral victory from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi — in Hebrew. In addition to all of this, he has a popular Instagram account with 630,000 followers. These accounts were especially active during the elections, utilizing video clips, announcements, reports and an initiative called Likud TV, a supposedly private news network that was disseminated on the party’s Facebook page. Its avowed goal was to sideline all major media outlets — Netanyahu claims the media is hostile to him, his family and Israel’s entire right-wing public ­­— and transmit messages directly to his constituency. For that purpose, TV emcee Eliraz Sadeh was enlisted to conduct well-orchestrated interviews with Netanyahu; these interviews attracted numerous viewers and were widely shared.

The team that operates the social networks of Netanyahu and the Likud is composed of young adults who are fluent in the digital language. They expertly target the main users of the networks: young adults who, according to the studies, get most of their information from these platforms.

Noa S. (a soldier whose name could not be cited for the interview) says she decided to vote for Netanyahu after she also spent much time viewing the videos of his rivals, mainly Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and Labor chairman Avi Gabbay. Netanyahu sounded the most articulate and trustworthy of them all. She also accepted his assertion that the regular media is hostile to him.