Netanyahu: The art of Arab vote suppression

At the weekly session of the Israeli Cabinet on Sept. 8, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask ministers to approve the so-called Cameras Law, overriding objections by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit on the installation of cameras at polling stations in Arab communities. Since the start of the current election cycle, Netanyahu has been obsessed with deploying the cameras in an attempt to intimidate voters and prevent them from exercising their democratic rights in the Sept. 17 elections.

Ahead of the elections held in April, Netanyahu had initiated what he called an “integrity campaign,” with his Likud party dispatching representatives equipped with 1,200 hidden cameras to polling stations on election day. When on the following day the results came in showing Arab voter turnout had dropped below 50%, and before Netanyahu realized he would not be able to form a new government, the prime minister and his wife, Sara, posed for photos with the heads of Kaizler Inbar, the public relations firm that carried out the NIS1.5 million ($430,000) operation.

Kaizler Inbar boasted of its achievement in reducing Arab voter turnout: “Following a long preparation period, amazing logistics, and deep and close cooperation with the best people in the Likud, we launched an operation that decisively contributed to one of the most important achievements of the national [right-wing] camp — ‘voting integrity’ in the Arab sector.… By placing our observers at every poll, voter participation was lower than 50%, the lowest in recent years.” 

Indeed, the cameras intimidated Arab voters for reasons that are hard to pin down. Arab Knesset member Issawi Freij of the Democratic Camp told Al-Monitor that Arab voters have always been mistrustful of the democratic process, and when rumors emerged on election day of right-wing activists documenting their personal, private moment with hidden cameras, they simply stayed home.