Israeli PM has denied writing inflammatory post about ‘Arabs who want to destroy us all’

Facebook has suspended a chatbot on Benjamin Netanyahu’s official page after it breached hate speech policy by sending visitors a message warning of Arabs who “want to destroy us all”.

Battling a tight election race in the run-up to the 17 September polls, the Israeli prime minister has sought to appeal to far-right religious and nationalist voters who fear the political influence of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Facebook said on Thursday it had suspended the automated chat function on the page, which is run by Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, for 24 hours.

“After careful review of the Likud campaign’s bot activities, we found a violation of our hate speech policy,” Facebook said in a statement. “Should there be any additional violations, we will continue to take appropriate action.”

In its now-deleted message automatically sent to visitors when they arrived on the page, the bot promised the prime minister would pursue “a rightwing policy of a Jewish state, security, and a strong Israel”.

It warned that any opposition coalition that included Arab politicians would be “a secular leftwing weak government that relies on Arabs who want to destroy us all – women, children and men”.

The chat window features Netanyahu’s name and picture, but the text identifies a volunteer as having sent the message.

In an interview with the domestic Kan Reshet Bet radio, Netanyahu denied writing the post, saying it was an employee’s mistake.

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Arab Israelis, who account for up to a fifth of the population, are Palestinian families who remained in their towns and villages after the war surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948. Hundreds of thousands of others fled or were expelled by pre-state forces. Those who remained became citizens and broadly support calls to establish a Palestinian state next to Israel.

They have long been the target of Netanyahu’s election efforts to shore up the vote. In 2015 on election day he warned that Arab Israeli voters were coming out “in droves”, a comment for which he later apologised. This year he went further, stating that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens … Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it”.

In this election, which was called after the prime minister failed to form a government in May, Netanyahu has made more concessions to hardliners. On Tuesday he announced he would annex large swaths of the occupied Palestinian territories if he was re-elected, a move that for decades has been considered an endgame scenario for Palestinians’ aspirations of statehood.

Last week he pushed for last-minute legislation that would allow party officials to bring cameras into polling stations. Critics said it was a clear attempt to intimidate Israel’s Arab population into not voting, as many may not want their political preference known. In the April election, Netanyahu’s party was censured for smuggling cameras into Arab polling centre.

Netanyahu insisted he was only interested in preventing voter fraud. However, the bill allowing parties to place cameras in polling stations failed to pass in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.