About two weeks before the last election, on the evening of March 23, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived for an urgent interview with Channel 12 news following a long period when he had refused to talk with the Israeli media. Earlier in the same weekend, the Likud’s internal polls showed that the submarine affair and the Blue and White party’s campaigning on his alleged corruption managed to seep into Likud voters as well. Until that point this base was stable in its support for Netanyahu, but Blue and White’s campaign had successfully linked his alleged personal corruption and the issues of state security.
Netanyahu, who conducted the Likud’s campaign by himself, concluded that he must embark on quick media action in order to stop the electoral spillover. Of course, he could have chosen a right-wing media channel, or as he often does, broadcast on Facebook Live, but he wanted to go where he would be attacked with hard questions with no mercy and no dispensations — and he knew why.
The interview with journalist Keren Marciano of Channel 12 turned into one of the election campaign’s most critical events. Marciano did excellent journalistic work by confronting Netanyahu with the suspicions against him on the various criminal charges, and as she made it harder for him, raised her tone and didn’t let go, Likud members’ WhatsApp groups burned in anger and identified with their leader. They felt he was wronged, that he was being treated with disrespect and that his diplomatic and economic accomplishments were being ignored. They felt they themselves were being attacked.
Anyone who experienced the internal Likud talk that evening would have noticed the gathering around Netanyahu and the sense of identification with him as a victim of media and police persecution. Netanyahu addressed the Likud public, its very underbelly, in that interview. He spoke of persecution aimed at taking down the right-wing government and it worked like magic. The next day there was no mention of the submarine affair among the Likud groups.
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