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Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu clashed over reports of an illegal network of fake social media accounts operated by senior Likud officials.

Gantz said yesterday at a press conference in Tel Aviv: “Netanyahu is going to lose, Netanyahu is stressed. The report published this morning reveals that Netanyahu is leading a campaign of terror on the consciousness of the citizens of Israel.”

Gantz also claimed that Netanyahu was involved in recordings of his private conversations leaked to the media. “Netanyahu does not balk at lies, does not balk at manipulations. This is not coincidence. The various security leaks (of Gantz’s private comments) combine with today’s news into one big lie,” he said.

He added: “Anyone who deals in leaks will not hesitate to establish a system of fake news, of which only the tip of the iceberg was revealed today. There is an entire system using large sums of money in order to win the election, and that needs to be investigated.”

Yair Lapid, number two in the Blue and White party, called Netanyahu the “chief troll” and said he “is trying to steal the election”.

The study of fake social media accounts, written by Noam Rotem and Yuval Adam, founders of the Big Bots Project, claimed that: “On peak days the network writes thousands of posts every day on behalf of Netanyahu and the Likud. One can clearly see that it was massively ‘operated’ after the election was called, and its activity is irregular relative to control groups with users who were chosen randomly. From the moment elections were called up until this report was written, that network posted more than 130,000 tweets. The network is enlisted at peak moments on behalf of Netanyahu.”

Netanyahu dismissed the report as libel. At a press conference yesterday, he introduced Giora Ezra, the owner of a Twitter account under the name “Captain George,” which was cited by the study as being one of the fake accounts in the alleged network, to refute the allegations. Netanyahu said: “They’re lying brazenly and say that the people who express themselves on the network aren’t real people. In the meantime, all of the examples have turned out to be real, independent people with real opinions.”

Ziv Knobler and two other Twitter users featured in the report also spoke to Israeli radio yesterday. The report did not say the accounts cited were not run by real people. Twitter has begun to remove some of the accounts that appeared in the study and will continue over the next few days.