How Netanyahu Regained Power in Israel

Earlier this year the State of Israel held elections. Netanyahu's Likud Party regained power after the elections.

As part of this election campaign Likud released a campaign ad which insinuated that a victory for the Israeli left wing opposition would be good for Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's lackeys (ISIL/ISIS).

Likud ratcheted up its campaign against the left in a video released Saturday suggesting that the left would allow the Islamic State (ISIS) into Israel.

The video shows actors dressed as ISIS fighters holding supposed ISIS flags driving in a pickup truck, and the words “Us or them, ISIS version.” On his Facebook page, alongside the video, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote: “This time choose: Likud headed by Netanyahu or a weak and submissive leftist government with Tzipi and Bougie,” referring to Zionist Union leaders MKs Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog. (Jonathan Lis, Haaretz.)

In video the following slogan is written on the car driven by ISIL.

Then there’s the slogan, in red Hebrew letters emblazoned on a gray, bullet-marked background: “THE LEFT WILL SURRENDER TO TERROR.” (Lisa Goldman, Netanyahu campaign video: A victory for the Left means an ISIS invasion, +972 Magazine.)

Imagine that: Netanyahu's party accusing other Israeli Jews of being inclined to do ISIL's bidding.

Here is how one Israeli woman talked about this kind of fear stirred up in the last election campaign.

Channel 10, for example, recently broadcast a series of pre-election clips in which candidates drive taxis while discussing politics with their passengers. In this clip, the blonde woman sitting in the back seat tells Meretz candidate Tamar Zandberg that she won’t vote for the Left (“it’s not personal! I don’t mean to insult you!”) because if the Left gets into power, Da’esh [ISIL] will overrun Israel. (Lisa Goldman, Netanyahu campaign video: A victory for the Left means an ISIS invasion, +972 Magazine.)

What venomous rhetoric. How bitterly divisive.