In the last elections, when the Likud Party started losing seats to HaBayit HaYehudi, headed by Naftali Bennett, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s people began a focused campaign to halt the trend. What they planned to do was to expose the real face of the extreme right-wing party, perceived by a significant chunk of the public as a fresh young movement with a tech-savvy leader, drawing voters from the “soft right” and center.
The campaign featured the most extreme faces of the party such as Orit Strock, one of the leaders of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. In response, Bennett highlighted names that appealed to the consensus, like former Israel Defense Forces officers Yoni Chetboun and Mordhay “Moti” Yogev, a former brigade commander in the Judea and Samaria Division and an educator who focused intensively on social and economic issues.
