Likud Files Police Complaint Against Eisenkot Campaign Manager Over X Post

With less than 24 hours remaining before Tuesday's general election, the ruling Likud party has escalated its campaign against opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot by filing a criminal complaint against his campaign manager. The legal action targets Ronen Manelis, who reshared a prediction market post on the social media platform X on Sunday.

Attorney Ilan Bombach submitted the complaint on Monday on behalf of Likud. The filing accuses Manelis of breaking Israel's election campaigning regulations by circulating data that suggests Eisenkot has a high probability of becoming the next prime minister. The specific post in question originated from Polymarket, a platform that forecasts the outcomes of future events rather than measuring public opinion through traditional surveys.

The reshared content displayed a chart comparing the chances of Eisenkot and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu winning the post. The figures assigned a 52 percent probability to Eisenkot and 28 percent to Netanyahu. The post also included a photograph of Eisenkot wearing his uniform as former IDF chief of staff. Bombach included a screenshot of Manelis's repost in the police submission to document the specific figures and visual elements shared with the public.

Likud argues that Manelis failed to clarify the nature of the data before sharing it. The complaint states that the figures represent the probability of a political outcome, not the results of a statistical survey. In the party's view, sharing the post without context could mislead voters into believing that 52 percent of the public plans to vote for Eisenkot, rather than simply indicating the likelihood of his victory in the prediction market.

Bombach described the incident in his letter to police as an attempt to influence voters through prohibited means. The complaint characterizes the offense as occurring under aggravating circumstances because Manelis manages the campaign for one of the primary candidates. The filing calls for police to investigate the post and pursue charges to the full extent of the law, citing a pressing public interest in the matter.

The legal basis for the complaint relies on Likud's interpretation that Polymarket's data constitutes an election poll under current statutes. No court or regulatory authority has yet ruled on whether the law's rules regarding the publication of opinion polls apply to prediction market probabilities. The police will now determine if the shared post meets the criteria for a violation of campaigning laws in the final days of the election.