With days to go before the Sept. 17 elections, “cyber” has become the hottest word being bandied about in the final leg of the battle for votes and public opinion. In the good old days, candidates competed on the streets and on billboards and at election rallies. These days, cyberspace has become the main arena.

On Sept. 13, Avigdor Liberman, head of Yisrael Beitenu, sent an urgent letter to the director of the National Cyber Directorate demanding that the agency block cyber attacks expected against his party in the days leading up to the balloting and on election day itself. In fact, on Sept. 2, Yisrael Beitenu urged the Central Election Committee to immediately stop the “bot” activity it accused the Likud of directing at Liberman, attaching to its request a list of 51 allegedly fraudulent Facebook accounts used to disseminate fake news in Russian. The posts were aimed mostly against Liberman, whose party has a strong following among immigrants from the former Soviet Union, but also against the Blue and White, the Democratic Camp and Labor-Gesher.

Liberman has been waging a titanic battle against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party for the immigrant vote. Netanyahu started the fight, fraught with raw emotion and clashing interests, when Liberman refused to join the government coalition he was trying to form following the April 2019 elections and appeared bent on destroying the prime minister’s political career. Netanyahu took his campaign to the bastion of Liberman supporters in a bid to lure away some of the electorate famously loyal to the Moldovan-born politician.

The more interesting and dangerous part of this campaign is being waged in the cyber realm. Netanyahu enjoys an almost unlimited budget, while Liberman is having to make do with far more modest sums derived from the far smaller number of votes his party received in April — 4% of the vote compared with Likud's 26.4%.