Visitors to the Prime Minister’s Facebook page, who clicked on a link about the coronavirus, received an automatic message claiming to be from Netanyahu.
“If you have friends or relatives aged 60 or older who haven’t been vaccinated yet, write a comment here with their name and phone number, and I can call them to convince them!” read the message.
By taking action and removing the items, Facebook said through a spokesperson that “under our privacy policy, we do not allow content sharing or soliciting medical information from people.”
The spokesperson added that Facebook “had removed the offensive message and temporarily suspended the Messenger bot sharing this content for violating these rules.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party issued a statement in response, stating that the goal was “to encourage Israelis over 60 to get vaccinated to save their lives after Prime Minister Netanyahu brought vaccines to every Israeli citizen.”
The party said it “is calling on everyone to get vaccinated so that we can open up the economy and be the first in the world to get out of the coronavirus”.
Netanyahu, who will run for the fourth election in two years in March, has made Israel’s leading global vaccination program the central message of its reelection campaign.