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.