Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot post photos of himself with IDF personnel during election season in any forum, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit told the Central Election Committee on Thursday.
Mandelblit was responding to a petition by the Labor party against Netanyahu for recent photo shoots he did during visits to IDF bases as violating laws against using the IDF for political-election-related purposes.
Notably, the attorney-general made no distinction between posting the photos on political sites, like Likud's election campaign site, and government sites, like the prime minister's office website.
The only exceptions to the rule, said Mandelblit, would be in the case of some kind of emergency where posting photos with the IDF could show public solidarity or achieve deterrence of an adversary state in the face of a crisis.
Mandelblit also said that nothing prevented Netanyahu from visiting IDF bases - just that he could not post photos from the visits. At the moment, a photo of Netanyahu with IDF soldiers is used at the top of his Facebook page, which has 2.3 million followers.