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Netanyahu: The art of Arab vote suppression

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing legislation to allow cameras in polling stations in Arab communities in an attempt to suppress the vote there and improve Likud's chances of emerging with at least one more Knesset seat than the Blue and White in Sept. 17 elections.
An Israeli-Arab woman prepares to casts her ballot as Israelis vote in a parliamentary election, at a polling station in Umm al-Fahm, Israel April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Ammar Awad - RC1E94535020
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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.

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