Alienating Arabs, and a Last-Minute Campaign for Video Cameras at Polling Centers, May Have Cost the Likud the Election https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2019/10/alienating-arabs-and-a-last-minute-campaign-for-video-cameras-at-polling-centers-may-have-cost-the-likud-the-election/

October 17, 2019 | Evelyn Gordon
About the author: Evelyn Gordon is a commentator and former legal-affairs reporter who immigrated to Israel in 1987. In addition to Mosaic, she has published in the Jerusalem Post, Azure, Commentary, and elsewhere. She blogs at Evelyn Gordon.

Following Israel’s most recent election, the Likud party finds itself at a disadvantage in comparison with its situation after the earlier elections in April. Evelyn Gordon contends that center-right voters defected to other parties or stayed home on election day because of mistakes made by the Likud’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu:

I’ve defended Netanyahu for years against false charges of anti-democratic conduct. . . . But during the latest campaign, he unquestionably adopted undemocratic tactics.

Take, for instance, . . . his proposal to allow cameras in polling stations to monitor voter fraud, which he tried unsuccessfully to ram through the Knesset a week before September’s election. The idea itself wasn’t illegitimate; even some leftists support it in principle. But the timing undeniably was.

[Netanyahu] also forgot the critical distinction between the Arab parties and the Arab electorate. The parties are a collection of Islamists, Communists, and radical Palestinian nationalists whose Knesset members actively work to undermine the Jewish state. . . . But most ordinary Israeli Arabs aren’t anti-Israel; in fact, 65 percent say they’re proud to be Israeli. . . . And while identity politics still drives most to vote for Arab parties, the majority are dissatisfied with those parties. Thus, not only do they not deserve to be tarred as enemies, but Israel has an interest in encouraging them to desert the Arab parties.

Instead, Netanyahu drove them straight into those parties’ arms by repeated invective against “Arabs,” which Arab voters naturally interpreted as referring to themselves even when he presumably meant the parties. . . . As a result, 82 percent of Arab voters backed the Arab parties’ Joint List, up from 70 percent in April [for the two separate Arab lists], and Arab turnout soared. . . . That Netanyahu’s behavior didn’t cost Likud even more votes is because he has been a superb prime minister.

Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/why-the-right-lost-israels-do-over-election/